
STORY- CALENDAR 




ONE HUNDREDTH 
AN NIVERSA RY 

THE DIDDLE PRESS 1010 CHERRY STREET 
PHILADELPHIA 

Copyrieht, 1908, by J. Linton Eagle. 



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1809 




Lincolnian* 



1909 




The Lincoln 
Story-Calendar 

For 1909 

HIS Calendar is designed to present upon the wall, in an 
attractive and convenient form for the hundredth year 
from Lincoln's birth in 1809, the strange and eventful 
career of the man mo^ beloved in American history. 
It is a serial story running through the year 1 909, with a 
short story for every week, making fifty life stories mainly 
rewritten by Wayne Whipple from his "Story-Life of Lincoln," a large 
volume of more than 700 pages. In most cases, each story in this Calendar 
covers several of those in the book, so this Lincoln Calendar gives, in story 
form, wath the aid of a little sketch for each narrative, a closer knowledge 
of the real life of Abraham Lincoln than can be obtained by the perusal 
of an ordinary biography. 

The stories are placed in the order of their occurrence, with special 
" celebrations, " poetical tributes, documents, facsimiles, etc., on the red 
letter days of the Lincoln Year, such as the signing of the Emancipation 
Proclamation on New Year's Day ( 1 863) ; the great poem on Lincoln, by 
Edwin Markham (author of "The Man with the Hoe"), on Lincoln's 
Birthday ; Lincoln's never-surpassed Gettysburg Address on Memorial 
Day, and so on. 

This Calendar is bound, by means of rings, to give it permanent value. 
Its sad and merry stories may be read through easily, "like a book," at any 
time, without reference to the dates ; and they may be preserved for 
reference long after the Lincoln Centenary is over. 



THE BIDDLE PRESS 

1010 Cherry Street, Philadelphia 



r. 






1809 




1909 



Why Lincoln 
Told His Stories 




T is only through Lincoln's stories that he can be understood be^. 
While President, he took several occasions to explain why he told 
so many stories — to enforce and illustrate a point and to save the 
time and temper often lost in useless argument. 



"1 am not a manufacturer,^^ he once remarked, "but a retailer of stones." 

Emerson said of Lincoln's story-telling: 

"It was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his 
secret ; to meet every kind of man and every rank in society ; to 
take off the edge of the severed decisions ; to mask his own purpose 
and sound his companion ; and to catch the true instincfl and temper 
of every company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man 
of severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, 
good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain again^ 
rancor and insanity." 

Emerson was right about Lincoln's gift, for one day, when a congressman 
asked how he could be " reminded of a story " while national affairs were in such 
a lamentable condition, the President replied, with deep earnestness : 

"You cannot be more anxious than I am; but I tell you now that if it were 
not for this vent I should die." 




r 



r 



1809 




1909 



PREAMBLE 

TO 

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 

By the President of the United States of America 



A PROCLAMATION 

Whereas, On (he tweuty-secoud day of September^ in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-tivo^ a Proclamation ivas issued by the President 
of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit : 

" That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight 
hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part 
of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
shall be then, thenceforward and forever free ; and the Executive Government of the 
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and 
maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such 
persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom." 

HOW PRESIDENT LINCOLN SIGNED IT 

The roll containing the Emancipation Proclamation was taken to Mr. Lincoln 
at noon on the first day of January, 1863, by Secretary Seward and his son Frederick. 
As it lay unrolled before him, Mr. Lincoln took a pen, dipped it in the ink, moved 
his hand to the place for the signature, held it a moment, then removed his hand and 
dropped the pen. After a little hesitation, he again took up the pen, going through 
the same movement as before. Mr. Lincoln then turned to Mr. Seward and said : 

" I have been shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning [at the regular 
New Year's Reception] and my right arm is almost 
paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history it will be 
for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand 
trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine 
the document hereafter will say, ' He hesitated.' " 

He then turned to the table, took up the pen again, 
and slowly, firmly, wrote Abraham Lincoln, with which 
the whole world is now familiar. He then looked up, 
smiled, and said : 

"That will do." 



This is a facsimile of that signature : 



^^^^{yrt^yfiayhj ^i^c^hA-a-^ 




JANUARY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



1 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




A BABY BOY IS BORN TO THOMAS AND NANCY LINCOLN 

HORTLY after his nomination for election to the Presidency, Lincoln 
wrote for Hicks, the portrait painter, the following brief statement : 

"I was born February 12, 1S09, in then Hardin County, Kentucky, at a point 
within the now county of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Hod- 
gen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my own memory not serving, 
I know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolen Creek. 

"June 14, i860. A. Lincoln." 

COUSIN DENNIS HANKS TELLS ABOUT IT 

" Tom an' Nancy lived on a farm about two miles 
from us when Abe was born. I ricollect Tom comin' 
over to our house one cold mornin' in Feb'uary and 
sayin' kind o' slow : 

" ' Nancy's got a boy baby.' 

" Mother got flustered an' hurried up 'er work to 
go over to look after the little feller, but I didn't have 
nothin' to wait fur, so I cut au' run the hull two mile 
to see my new cousin. 

" You bet I was tickled to death. Babies wasn't 
as common as blackberries in the woods of Kaintucky. 
Mother come over and washed him an' put a yaller 
flannen petti- 
coat on him, 
an' cooked 
some dried 
berries with 
slicked things 
that's all the 




Dennis Hanks. 



an' 
An' 



\ 



wild honey fur Nancy, 
up an' went home. 

iiuss'n either of 'em got 

"Folks often ask me if Abe was a good- 
lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just like 
any other baby at fust — like red cherry pulp 
squeezed dry. An' he didn't improve any 
as he growed older. Abe never was much 
fur looks. I ricollect how Tom used to joke 
about Abe's long legs when he was toddlin' 
'round tlie cabin. He growed out o' his 
clo'es faster 'n Nancy could make 'em." 

From Lincoln's Boyhood by Eleanor Atkinson 
in The American Magazine. 




Lincoln's Birthplace. 



JANUARY 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. 

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 



SAT. 



c.. 



1809 




1909 




THE LITTLE LINCOLN BOY NARROWLY 
ESCAPES DROWNING 



HEN little Abe was four years old, his parents moved from Nolen 
Creek to Knob Creek, about a dozen miles distant. In this 
neighborhood lived, twenty-five years ago, an old man named Austin 
Gollaher, who had gone to school with the little Lincoln boy, in a 
log school-house, where Zechariah Riney was Abe's first teacher. 
Old Mr. Gollaher told the following story : 



"I once saved Lincoln's life. We had been going to school together one year; but the 
next year we had no school, because there were so few scholars to attend. Consequently Abe 
and I did not get to see each other very often. One Sunday my mother went to see Mrs. Lincoln 
and took me along, and Abe and I played all through the day. 

"While we were wandering up and down the little stream called Knob Creek, Abe said : 

"'Right over there' — pointing to the east — 'I saw some partridges yesterday. Let's 
go over.' 

"We found a log, but it was narrow, so Abe said: 

" ' Let's coon it.' 

" I went first and reached the other side all right. Abe went about half-way across, when 
he got scared and began trembling. I hollered to him : 

" ' Don't look up or down or sidewaj's, but look right at me and hold on tight ! ' 

" But he fell off into the creek, and as the water was about seven or eight feet deep (I could 
not swim and neither could Abe), I knew it would be no good for me to go in after him. 

"So I got a stick— a long water sprout — and held it out to him. He came up, grabbing 
with both hands, and I put the stick into his hands. He clung to it and I pulled him out on 
the bank, almost dead. I got him by the arms and 
shook him well ; then I rolled him on the ground, 
and the water poured out of his mouth. 

"He was all right very soon. We promised 
each other that we would never tell anybody about 
it, and I never did for years. " 




JANUARY 

MON. TUBS. WED. THUR. FRI. 

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 



SUN 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




THE FIRST GREAT SORROW IN LINCOLN'S LIFE 

HREE years later, when Abraham was seven years old, the family 
moved again ; this time across the Ohio to Pigeon Creek, near 
Gentrj'ville, Spencer County, Indiana. 

Here Thomas Lincoln put an ax in the boy's hands and the 
child helped his father build a " half-faced camp," or shed made of 
poles, walled in on three sides only. 
A year or so after that they built a log cabin that was less uncomfortable, 
though the window and door were mere openings in the walls. 

Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, cousins of Mrs. Lincoln, came over from Kentucky 
and lived in the half-faced camp. With them came Dennis Hanks, a boy several 
years older than Abe, who became his playmate and companion for a dozen years. 
The Sparrows both died of a strange disease, called the " milk-sick," and a little 
later Nancy Hanks Lincoln was also stricken. She called her children, Sarah, aged 
eleven, and Abraham, then nine, to her side and gave a mother's counsel and comfort. 
Thomas Lincoln made coffins for the three and buried them on a knoll in the 
forest, "without benefit of clergy." 

Lincoln seldom spoke of his own mother, but when he did refer to her it was 
with the utmost tenderness. Years afterward he said of her : 
" All I am or hope to be I owe to my sainted mother !" 




The second cabin in Indiana. 



JANUARY 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI, SAT. 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 



1809 




1909 




A NEW MOTHER COMES TO THE FORLORN FAMILY 

HAT a girl of eleven could do to take her dead mother's place, little 
Sarah Lincoln did for the forlorn household. Dennis Hanks, having 
lost his foster parents by the "milk-sick," came to live in the cabin 
with the motherless Lincoln children. 

In those days the pioneers seldom saw a preacher. Abraham wrote 
his first letter to ask Parson Elkin, "back in Kentucky," to come 
nearly a hundred miles to preach his mother's funeral sermon. The 
boy could not bear the thought that his dear mother had been buried 
without any religious service whatever. The old preacher came the following summer, 
and the people came for many miles around, in ox-carts and on horseback, to gather 
about the little mound in the woods to hear the kind old man's tribute to the memory of 

Nancy Hanks Lincoln. 

But " what is home without a mother ? ' ' Thomas 
Lincoln was, at best, a shiftless man. Though he 
was a carpenter and cabinet-maker, he had not laid 
a floor in his cabin nor covered the openings in the 
walls with a window or a door. Abraham and Dennis 
had to climb to the low loft overhead, to sleep on their 
bed of leaves, by means of pegs in the log wall of the 
cabin. When the disheartened father could bear his 
lonely lot no longer, he remembered that Sally Bush, 
whom he had known in youth, had lost her husband, 
Jailer Johnston, "away back in Elizabethtown." 
Saying nothing of his purpose, he set ofi" to visit his 
former homes and haunts in Kentucky. 

One day, after he had been gone several weeks, 
the children at Pigeon Creek were surprised to see 
their father drive up with a four-horse team and a wagon-load of furniture and other 
comforts. They were duly presented to the new mother, who speedily changed their 
wretched condition to a state of comfort and cheer. 
They were washed and clothed, and properly fed and 
housed. Among other "luxuries," Sarah Bush Lin- 
coln brought a bureau worth forty dollars ! 

The stepmother had three children of her own, so 
there were eight Lincolns and Johnstons (with Dennis 
Hanks) for Thomas Lincoln to provide for. His new 
wife soon induced him to lay a floor, cover the window 
and hang a door. With deerskin curtains and bear- 
skin rugs she made the cabin quite cosey and com- 
fortable. Abraham always showed the deepest grati- 
tude for his new mother's care and kindness. Many 
years afterwards (although she had a son of her own) 
she said of him : 

"Abe never gave me a cross word or a look. He 
was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see." 




The delayed funeral services- 




\ 



Lincoln's Stepmother. 



JANUARY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



24 25 26 27 28 29 30 



1809 




1909 



LEARNING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 




BRAHAM'S father could not see any sense in the boy's reading all 
the time, for Abe devoured all the books he could borrow within a 
radius of fifty miles, and that was not many. He used to visit the 
town constable and pore over the " Revised Statutes of Indiana " 
very much as boys nowadays read "The Three Guardsmen" or 
" Sherlock Holmes." He would read an old dictionary by the hour 
when nothing better was at hand. About the only book of fiction he found was 
" The Arabian Nights," which he greatly enjoyed. Of course, he learned the Bible 
almost by heart. In his rough, primitive way, Thomas Lincoln was a religious man. 
But he did not believe in " eddication," and thought Abe's master passion for 
study was only a symptom of chronic laziness. 

His stepmother saw that "Abe was no common boy," and gave him all the 
encouragement she could. She induced her husband to let the lad go to school a 
month or two, now and then. Lincoln stated afterward that altogether he did not 
have a whole year's schooling. But he easily surpassed all the other pupils, writing 
"compositions" against cruelty to animals, and even composing verses, which was 
considered a rare accomplishment in that backwoods neighborhood. 

He read and studied lying on the floor before the fire at night, after the day's 
work was done. When he had no paper to cipher on, he would use the wooden 
shovel, making notes with charcoal, and shaving the figures off with his father's draw- 
knife to make his queer slate ready for other problems. 

His stepmother said that sometimes every available space on the walls and under 
benches and stools was covered with Abe's crude charcoal " notes." When he got 
some paper he would copy them all off 
with a turkey buzzard pen and briar-root 
ink. Then he planed the places clean 
again. All this was studying under diffi- 
culties, but Abraham Lincoln learned 
thoroughly what he studied. In after life 
he said to a law-student in his office : 

" It is all in that one word, 
'•Thorough.'' " 




JANUARY 



SUN, 



31 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT, 



1809 




1909 



ABE BECOMES THE OWNER OF WEEMS'S 
"WASHINGTON" 




NCE Abraham borrowed a book from Josiah Crawford, a well-to-do 
farmer living near Gentr>ville. Josiah Crawford was about the only 
man in the community that Abe didn't like. The young folks of 
the neighborhood called him "Old Blue-Nose," for an obvious reason. 
Josiah Crawford is not to be confused with Andrew Crawford, 
Abe's best teacher, who taught the children " manners," as well as 
"the three R's"— " Readin', 'Ritin' and 'Rithmetic." 

Abe overcame his dislike for old " Old Blue-Nose " enough to borrow from him 
a coveted book, Weems's "Life of Washington," which he read till late at night and 
then tucked it away in a chink between two logs in the wall beside his bed. A driving 
rain-storm came up during the night and the wet mud-mortar they had used in 
building the cabin ruined the cherished " Life of Washington." 

What was to be done? " Old Blue-Nose " would be very angry over the spoiling 
of the precious volume, for books were very scarce there in those da)s. Abe " took 
the bull by the horns" and told Mr. Crawford all about the mishap. To his 
astonishment Josiah Crawford, instead of being- 
angry, turned the accident to account. He told Abe 
he could pay for the book by " days' works " and 
own Weems's " Washington." He reckoned the 
book was worth seventy-five cents, and Abe could 
pay for it by " pulling fodder " for three days at 
twenty-five cents a day. Abraham was relieved, but 
he still thought Mr. Crawford was taking a mean 
advantage of his misfortune. He did the work, 
however, and owned the book, but he once wrote 
satirical verses about old Crawford's nose. 




Josiah Crawford ( "Old Blue-Nose" I 



SUN. 



FEBRUARY 

lUES. WED. TMURS. FRI, SAT. 

12 3 4 5 6 



MON 




1809 l^.MMaM 1909 



LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY 

LINCOLN. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, 

The tang and odor of the primal things — 

The rectitude and patience of the rocks ; 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn ; 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea ; 

The pity of the snow that hides all scars ; 

The loving kindness of the wayside well ; 

The tolerance and equity of light 

That gives as freely to the shrinking weed 

As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 

To the grave's low hill as to the Matter horn 

That shoulders out the sky. 

And so he came. 
From prairie cabin up to Capitol, 
One fair ideal led our chieftain on. 
For evermore he burned to do his deed 
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king. 
He built the rail pile as he built the State, 
Pouriug his splendid strength through every blow, 
The con.science of him testing every stroke. 
To make his deed the measure of a man. 

So came the Captain with the mighty heart ; 
And when the step of earthquake shook the house, 
Wre.sting the rafters from their ancient hold. 
He held the ridgepole up and spiked again 
The rafters of the Home. He held his place — 
Held the long purpose like a growing tree — 
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. 
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs, 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills. 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 

From Lincoln and Other Poems, by Edwin Markham. 
By permission of The McClure Co. 

FEBRUARY 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

7 8 9 10 II 12 13 




1809 




1909 



SOME SCHOOLBOY RHYMES 




HILE at school it is doubtful if he was able to own an arithmetic. 
Even his stepmother could not remember his ever having owned one. 
She gave me, however, a few leaves from a book made and bound 
by Abe, in which he had entered, in a large, bold hand, the tables 
of weights and measures, and the "sums" to be worked out in 
illustration of each table. Where the arithmetic was obtained I 
could not learn. On one of the pages which tlie old lady gave me, 
and just beneath the table which tells how many pints there are in a bushel, the 
facetious young student had scrawled these four lines of schoolboy doggerel : 

"Abraham Lincoln, 
His hand and pen, 
He will be good, 
But God knows when." 

On another page were found, in his own hand, a few lines which it is also said he 
composed. Nothing indicates that they were borrowed, and I have always, therefore, 
believed that they were original with him. Although a little irregular in metre, the 
sentiment would, I think, do credit to an older head : 

"Time, what an empty vapor 'tis, 

And days how swift they are ; 
Swift as an Indian arrow — 

Fly on like a shooting star. 
The present moment just is here. 

Then slides away in haste, 
That we can never say they're ours, 

But only say they're past." 

His penmanship, after some practice, became so 
regular in form that it excited the admiration 
of other and younger boys. One of the latter, 
Joseph C. Richardson, said that " Abe Lincoln 
was the best penman in the neighborhood." At 
Richardson's request he made some copies for 
practice. During my visit to Indiana I met 
Richardson, who showed these two lines which 
Abe had prepared for him : 

' ' Good boys who to their books apply 
Will all be great men by and by." 



As related by William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law 
partner, and quoted in The Story-Life of Lincoln. 




(}f/midc/flmi 




Facsimile of page from Lincoln's 
Exercise Book. 



FEBRUARY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THUR. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



14 15 16 17 18 19 20 



1809 




1909 



WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY 

EXTRACTS FROM LINCOLN'S ADDRESS, DELIVERED FEBRUARY 22, 1842. 

F our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud. It has given 
us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other nation 
of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long-mooted 
problem as to the capacity of man to govern himself . . . 

" Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a 
stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant 




deposed ; in it more of want supplied, more diseases healed, more sorrow assuaged. 
By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. 

"And when the victory shall be complete, when there shall be neither a slave nor 
a drunkard on the earth — how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to 
be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in 
that victory ! . . . 

" This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of Washington ; we 
are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth — long since 
mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that 
name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to 
the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe 
pronounce the name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on." 




FEBRUARY 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI, SAT. 

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 



1809 




1909 




"OLD BLUE-NOSE'S" HIRED MAN 

T seems to be our lot, sometimes, to be obliged to do the very thing we 
dislike most of all. Abraham's sister was, at one time, maid-of-all-work 
for the wife of Josiah Crawford, the detested " Blue Nose." Abe had 
to work for the farmers round about, doing anything he could turn his 
hand to — and he could do almost anything, from butchering to making 
a stump speech, or writing a political essay for the county paper. 

So he went to work for Josiah Crawford as hired man . His sister, 
being already there, made this position a little less distasteful. Besides, he rather liked 
Mrs. Crawford, who tells some interesting stories about his life in her home. She relates : 
" Abe was no hand to pitch into the work like killing snakes, but he would do any- 
thing, and was a kind and helpful hand about the house. He would stay behind and talk 
to the women folks after dinner. He was always polite, lifting his hat in speaking to a 
lady. He was full of his jokes and stories, and seemed to enjoy talking to us at the 
house. Even then one of his greatest jokes was that he would, some day, be President. 
We used to laugh heartily at this strange conceit. I once said to him : 

" ' A pretty President you'd make, Abe, with all your jokes and nonsense.' 
" ' I'll get ready and the time will come,' he retorted, 

'' But none of us ever thought his ' time ' would come, and I don't think he really 
did, either. Then he would suddenly remember that other than presidential affairs 
demanded his immediate attention, and he would start up, snatch his poor old excuse 
for a hat and exclaim : 

" 'Well, this won't buy the child a coat,' and start after Mr. Crawford as fast as 
his long legs could carry him." 




Home of the Crawfords. 



FEBRUARY 



SUN. 



28 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



» 



1809 




1909 



QUOTATIONS FROM LINCOLN'S TWO INAUGURAL 

ADDRESSES 

From the First Inaugural, March ^tli, iS6t. 

" I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be 
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds 
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle- 
field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as 
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 



From the Second Inaugural, March 4th, iS6§. 

"With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness in the right, 
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are 
in, to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne 
the battle, and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just and lasting place among ourselves, and with all nations." 




SUN. 



MARCH 

MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

12 3 4 5 6 



1809 




1909 



WAS ABE LINCOLN LAZY? 




INCOLN was full of fun and so constantly making quaint speeches 
that the men often hung around to hear what he had to say. While 
working out on a neighbor's farm it was often very annoying to see 
the men all gathered about the stump on which Abe lyincoln was 
spouting, or with his inimitable drollery, taking off some back- 
woods orator or preacher. 
The farmers said Lincoln was lazy, and it was remarked that he " liked his pay 
better than his work." Abe said once that his "father taught him to work but 
never learnt him to love it." Thomas Lincoln was greatly annoyed at his overgrown 
son's propensity for talking and getting up an argument. One day a man, passing 
by on horseback, stopped to ask direction. Abe, always ready to talk to any man, 
mounted the fence to furnish the desired information, when his father knocked him 
off the fence and answered the question himself 

Abe's wages, twenty-five to thirty cents a day, were paid to his father. The 
lad used often to take a book to the field and read at the ends of the furrows, 
while resting the horse, in ploughing. 

A neighbor named Lamar was passing, one day, and saw a tall, lank youth 
sitting on a "stake and rider" fence buried in a book. Lamar said to the 
young son who was with him : 

"Mark my word, John, that boy will make a great man of himself some day." 
"That boy" was Abraham Lincoln. 




MARCH 



SUN. 



MON. 



8 



TUES. WED. THUR5. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



10 11 12 13 



1809 




1909 




ST. PATRICK'S DAY 

"If Ye'll Credit Me So Long!" 

HAT an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect 
a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness 
of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority 
of which community take no pains whatever to secure their own 
eternal welfare at no more distant day ? 

" Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to 
lull and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be 
endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded, even in our own 
cases, and much less in the cases of others. Still, in addition to this, there is some- 
thing so ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off, as to render 
the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule. 

" ' Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy ; if you don't, you'll pay 
for it at the day of judgment.' 

" ' Be the powers, if ye'll credit me so long, PU take another, jist !' " 

(From a speech delivered in Springfield when Lincoln was thirty-three.) 




This is the portrait about which the newsboy called out : 

" Here's yer ' Old Abe.' He'll look better when he gets his hair combed !" 

MARCH 

MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. 

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 



SUN 



SAT. 



( 



> 



1809 




1909 



THE PRETTY GIRL OF THE SETTLEMENT 




P.RAHAM was considered good at spelling. In school they "trapped" 
up and down, and he held his place at the head of the class. When 
they had spelling matches, the side that chose Abe Lincoln alwa\s 
"spelled down." So he had to be left out of their "spelling bees." 
One day he happened outside the schoolroom when Andrew 
Crawford was hearing a class in spelling. The teacher gave out 
the word ''defied,'' which they all misspelled. In his exasperation he told the class 
that no one should be allowed to leave the schoolhouse until the word was spelled 
correctly. This did not inspire the poor spellers with confidence, and the case 
began to look desperate. 

The last speller was Kate Roby, a pretty girl whom Abe is said to have admired. 
This may have been why he was hanging about the schoolhouse that day. — She began, 

slowly and hesitatingly, to spell the word : "d — e — f " (here Abe put his forefinger 

up to his eye.) Kate took the hint and finished : " /— ed," with a flourish of triumph. 

On another occasion, .several years later, Abe was sitting on the river bank 

with Kate, when she remarked that the sun was eoina: down. 

" The sun doesn't go down," Lincoln said. 
" It stands as still as a tree and we go around it. 
We are coming up, that's all." 

But this was too much for even a bright 
backwoods girl to comprehend. It sounded 
.silly to her; she received his lesson in astronomy 
with a scornful, 

" Haven't I got eyes, and can't I see 
it going do'ci'n? What a fool you are, Abe 
Lincoln!" '"" i^jjim n mmr miiii ni m 




^4£»j.^ 



SUN. 



MON. 



MARCH 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



21 22 23 24 25 26 27 



( 



i 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN TELLS HOW HE EARNED HIS FIRST DOLLAR 

This story has been widely circulated. There are several inconsistencies in it. The Lincoln 

family never raised enough produce to send down the river to sell. The story, 

while doubtlesri true in the main, cannot be exactly as Lincoln related it. 

RWARD," lie said, "did you ever hear how I earned my first dollar?" 
"No," I replied. 

"Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age, and 
belonged, as you know, to what they called down South the 'scrubs' — 
people who do not own land and slaves are nobody there; but we 
had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, 
as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell. After much persuasion 
I had got the consent of my mother to go, and had constructed a flatboat large enough 
to take the few barrels of things we had gathered to New Orleans. A steamer was 
going down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the western streams, and 
the custom was, if pas.seugers were at any of the landings they had to go out in a 
boat, the steamer stopping, and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new 
boat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any part, 
when two men with trunks came down to the shore in carriages, and looking at the 
different boats, singled out mine, and asked : 

"'Who owns this?' 

"I answered modestly, 'I do.' 

"'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 

"'Certainly,' said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning something, 
and supposed that each of them would give me a couple of 'bits.' The trunks were 
put in my boat, the passengers seated themselves on them, and I sculled them out to 
the steamer. They got on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the deck. 
The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out : 

"'You have forgotten to pay me.' 

" Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the 
bottom of my boat. I could .scarcely believe my ej'es 
as I picked up the money. You may think it was 
a very little thing, and in these days it seems to nie 
like a trifle, but it was a most important incident 
in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor 
boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day ; that by 
honest work I had earned a dollar. I was a more 
hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time." 




MARCH 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THUR. 



28 29 30 31 



FRI. 



SAT. 



( 



» 



1809 




1909 




SEVERAL FEATS OF STRENGTH 

HEN only fourteen years old, Abraham was over six feet tall, 
lank and wiry, and "as strong as an ox." Many are the stories 
told of his feats of strength while working for the farmers of the 
neighborhood. One of these, named Richardson, used to say, 
"Abe Lincoln could carry a load three ordinary men could hardly 
lift." One time, when the Richardsons were building a corn-crib, 

young Lincoln, "seeing three or four men preparing 'sticks' on which to carry 

some huge posts, relieved them all of further trouble by shouldering the posts, alone, 

and carrying them to the place where they were wanted." 

" Old Mr. Wood," another neighbor, said : "Abe could strike with a maul a 

heavier blow than any other man, and could sink an axe deeper into the wood than 

any other man I ever saw." 

Dennis Hanks used to say, that when you heard — without seeing — Lincoln 

felling trees in the woods, the trees came crashing down at such short intervals that 

you would think three men were at work there. 

Late one freezing night, when returning from threshing wheat for Turnham, 

the constable, Abe and some companions found an old man lying drunk by 

the roadside. The others were for leaving 

him there, but Lincoln possessed too much 

of the " Good Samaritan " spirit for that. To 

leave a helpless man in the road such a night 

as that seemed monstrous to him. Unable to 

rouse the intoxicated man to make any 

exertion, Abe took the huge, apparently life- 
less body in his long, strong arms and carried 

him eighty rods to a neighbor's cabin, where 

he made a fire, warmed and nursed the unfor- 
tunate man tlirough the rest of the night. 

The man used to say that Lincoln had 

saved his life, and he once told John Hanks : 
" It was mighty clever in Abe to tote 

me to a warm fire that cold night." 




APRIL 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED, 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



1 



( 



i 



1809 




1909 




ABE'S FIRST TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS 

BE had long since given up the idea of earning a living behind the 
counter of Jones's store, or any other that he knew ot. He was under 
bonds to his father, but he made an attempt to obtain employment as a 
boat-hand on the river. His age was against him in his first effort, but 
his opportunity was coming to him. In the month of March, 1S28, he 
hired himself to Mr. Gentry, the great man of Gentryville. His duties 
were to be nainly performed at Gentry's Landing, near Rockport, on 
the Ohio River. There was a great enterprise on foot, or rather in the water, at Gentry's 
Landing, for a flatboat belonging to the proprietor was loading with bacon and other 
produce for a trading trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. She was to be luider the 
command of young Allen Gentry, but would never return to the Ohio, for flatboats are 
built to go down with the stream and not for pulling against it. 

The flatboat was cast loose from her moorings in April, and swept away down the 
river, with Abraham Lincoln as manager of the forward oar. No such craft ever had a 
longer or stronger pair of arms pledged to keep her blunt nose well directed. 

At the plantation of Madame Duchesne, six miles below Baton Rouge, the flatboat 
was moored for the night against the landing, and the keepers were sound asleep in their 
little kennel of a cabin. They slept until the sound of stealthy footsteps on the deck 
aroused Allen Gentry, and he sprang to his feet. There could be no doubt as to the cause 
of the disturbance. A gang of negroes had boarded the boat for plunder, and they would 
think lightly enough, now they were discovered, of knocking the two traders on the head 
and throwing them into the river. 

" Bring the guns, Abe ! " shouted Allen. " Shoot them ! " 

The intruders were not to be scared away by even so alarming an outcry ; and in an 
instant more Abe was among them, not with a gnn, but with a serviceable club. They 
fought well, and one of them gave their tall enemy a wound, the scar of which he carried 
with him to his grave; but his strength and agility were too much for them. He beat 
them all off the boat, not killing any one 
man, but convincing the entire party that 
they had boarded the wrong " broad-horn." 
The trip lasted about three months, 
going and coming, and in June the two 
adventurers were at home again, well 
satisfied with their success. 




As related by W. O. Stoddard, the well-known author, and only surviving 
private secretary to President Lincoln. 



APRIL 

MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 



SUN 



1809 




1909 




MOVING TO ILLINOIS 

OON after Lincoln's return from New Orleans the family had a letter 
from Cousin John Hanks, inviting them all to come to Illinois to live. 
Thomas Lincoln's restless, roving spirit was again roused. They had 
lived fourteen years in Indiana. That was long enough. The younger 
members of the family saw nothing before them but ' ' hard work and 
poor living." Sarah Lincoln had been married, at eighteen, to Aaron 
Grigsby, and died within a year. Dennis Hanks had married one of 
Abraham's stepsisters. Besides these there were Mrs. Lincoln's son, John Johnston, and 
the sister who was married to a young man named Hall. 

Thomas Lincoln turned in his farm, which was not yet paid for, to Mr. Gentry, had 
a " vendoo" and sold his corn, hogs and whatever he could not well take to Illinois, and 
in February, 1830, the whole family emigrated in one wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. 
Abe invested all his money, about thirty dollars, in " notions" to peddle along the 
way, and afterwards wrote back to Storekeeper Jones that he had doubled his money. 
One incident along the road illustrated the tenderness of Lincoln's heart. 
A dog belonging to one of the family fell behind and, after the oxen had floundered 
through the mud, snow and ice of a prairie stream, they 
discovered that they had left the cur behind. The others, 
annoyed, and anxious to go on and find a camping place for the 
night, for it was then late, were in favor of leaving the dog to 
his fate. To turn back with the heavy wagon and ox-team was 
out of the question. 

But Abraham could see the dog on the other bank running 
up and down in great distress. Once, referring to this incident, 
he said : 

" I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. 
Pulling off shoes and socks I waded across the stream and 
triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm. 
His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog's gratitude 
amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone." 




APRIL 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THUR. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



11 12 13 14 15 16 17 



< 



1809 




1909 




SPLITTING RAILS AND STARTING OUT FOR HIMSELF 

FTER two weary weeks of plodding through muddy prairie aud over 
rough forest roads, now and then fording swollen and dangerous 
streams, the Indiana emigrants were met by Cousin John Hanks near 
Decatur, Illinois, and given a hearty welcome. He had chosen a spot 
for them not far from his own home, and had the logs all ready to build 
them a cabin. As there were six men of them, besides strong young 
Abe, who counted for three on such occasions, they erected their first 
home in Illinois without calling in outside aid. 

Abraham was then a little over twenty -one. His father had always exacted his meager, 
hard-earned wages, but Abe, though now a free man, stood by and performed the extra 
labors of making a clearing in the forest thus leaving his father and stepmother, with her 
various family, in comfortable quarters before starting out for himself in life. As the first 
thing he did, after leaving home, was to split rails (at 400 rails per yard !) to pay for 
enough walnut-dyed jeans to make him a decent suit of clothes, it is more than probable 
that he also turned over to his father the thirty dollars he had made by peddling "notions" 
along the road. 

Nicolay and Hay, President Lincoln's private secretaries, have left the following 
record of some of the rails he split to enclose 
their new home : 



"With the assistance of John Hanks he 
plowed fifteen acres, and split, from the tall 
walnut trees of the primeval forest, enough rails 
to surround them with a fence. Little did 
either dream, while engaged in this work, that 
the day would come when the appearance of 
John Hanks in a public meeting, with two of 
these rails on his shoulder, would electrify a 
State convention, and kindle throughout the 
country a contagious and passionate enthusiasm 
whose results would reach to endless genera- 
tions." 




First Home in Illinois. 



APRIL 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES, 



WED. THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



18 19 20 21 22 23 24 



i 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN'S SECOND TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS 

HE next winter (that of 1830-31) was long remembered in Illinois as 
" tlie winter of the deep snow." It was a season of many deaths from 
cold and hunger, of many privations and much suffering. In the 
spring, through John Hanks, Lincoln met Denton Offutt, who 
engaged Hanks, Lincoln and John Johnston, Lincoln's stepbrother, 
to take a flatboat loaded with barrel pork, corn and hogs to New 
Orleans. The three men were themselves obliged to build the boat. This took a 
month, during which time Abe's stories won him many friends, and his coolness, 
sagacity, and courage in rescuing three companions from watery graves, made him 
a hero along the Sangamon river. 

At last the flatboat was launched, and it soon lodged on Rutledge's dam, at New 
Salem, where the inhabitants saw a tall, lank young man " with his trousers turned up 
five feet or more " wading about. By an ingenious contrivance, boring a hole through 
the forward end of the flatboat, Lincoln managed to get it over the dam, where they 
reloaded and went on their way down the river rejoicing. 

In New Orleans, where the three friends stayed 
several weeks, a "voodoo" negro woman is said to 
have foretold that Lincoln would, one day, be Presi- 
dent, and free the slaves. That she actually told 
him the former, if consulted, is quite probable. It 
was at this time, during his second visit to New 
Orleans, that Lincoln saw a nearly white girl 
auctioned off to the highest bidder in a slave market. 
"The sight filled him with a deep feeling of uncon- 
querable hate" (it was said), and he exclaimed to 
his two companions : 

" Boys, let's get away from this. If I ever get 
a chance to hit that thing (meaning slavery), I'll 
hit it hard !" 




Lincoln at the slave market. 



APRIL 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. WED. THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



25 26 27 28 29 30 



1809 




1909 




HOW LINCOLN WON THE FAVOR OF 
"THE CLARY'S GROVE BOYS" 

N his way back from New Orleans, Lincoln visited his father. While 
there he encountered Needham, the champion wrestler of that 
region, and threw him. He soon returned to New Salem to open 
the goods which Offutt had ordered to stock up a store in that place. 
While waiting for the stock to arrive, he was hanging about another 
store, where an election was being held. The tall stranger, on 
being asked if he could write, replied : 
" Yes, I can make a few rabbit tracks." 

He was recognized as the ingenious youth who had managed to get the flatboat 
over the dam several months before. After a time, Offutt and his "general merchan- 
dise " arrived, and Uncoln was duly installed as clerk. His employer was so loud in 
his boasts of the prowess of the new salesman, that Lincoln was challenged to a 
match with Bill Armstrong, the leading bully of a rowdy gang from a nearby settle- 
ment known as Clary's Grove. 

Abe detested " pulling and woolling," as he called it, but Offutt's wager and his 
own honor seemed to be at stake, so he was forced into the combat. 

A ring was marked out and the two grappled. It seemed to be an even match 
until the "Clary's Grove Boys " tried to trip up the stranger and take an unfair 
advantage. This enraged Lincoln — he seized the big bully by the throat, held 
him up and shook him as a cat would a rat. His strength and courage on this 
occasion did the work of years in establishing Lincoln in the high esteem of that 
community. The " Clary's Grove Boys " became his staunch friends, declaring then 
and there : 

"Abe Lincoln's the cleverest fellow that ever broke into the settlement." 




MAY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



1 



1809 




1909 




HOW HE GOT THE NAME OF "HONEST ABE" 

URING the six years Lincoln lived at New Salem he established his 
reputation for sterling and sensitive honesty and endeared himself to 
his neighbors by his kindness of heart and obliging disposition. Many 
are the stories told of his strict honesty in all his dealings On one 
occasion, while clerking for Offutt, he sold a woman a bill of goods. 
At night, in proving up his work for the day, he found she had given 
him a sixpence too much. After locking the store he set off, walking 
miles to return the sixpence. 

At another time, on opening the store, he found the four-ounce weight on the scales. 
This showed that he had not given another customer as much tea as had been paid for, so he 

took a long walk before breakfast, delivering the rest of 
the tea before he could eat. 

One day a " loud- mouthed fellow " came in and used 
profane and offensive language in the presence of several 
women. Lincoln quietly requested him to leave the store or 
stop his offensive conduct. The fellow continued, abusing 
the new clerk. After the women had gone, Lincoln, 
without showing the least anger, said : 

"Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may 
as well do it as anyone." 

The two went out of doors. Lincoln easily threw the 
l>ig bully to the ground, held him there with one hand 
while he gathered some smartweed with the other, and 
rubbed it into the fellow's face and eyes until he bellowed for 
When the man gave up and promised to behave thereafter, Lincoln brought some 
water and did all in his power to relieve the poor fellow's suffering. 

While working in Offutt 's store, young Lincoln 
succeeded in persuading his fellow clerk, William G Greene, 
to quit betting. The tall clerk won a large wager for his 
young friend by a great feat of strength — lifting a forty -gallon 
barrel of whiskey and drinking from the bunghole. Greene 
said it was the only time he ever saw Lincoln taste whiskey, 
but that Abe did it then only to prove that he could, and spat 
it out immediately. Lincoln performed the feat only because 
the younger clerk had promised that if he would help him 
this once he would never gamble again. And he never did. 




mercy. 




MAY 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. 

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 



CAPTAIN IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR 




HILE employed in Offutt's store, in the spring of 1832, Lincoln's 
friends began to advise him to become a candidate for the State 
Legislature. He had some ambition in that direction, but felt that 
he lacked education. Mentor Graham, the village school-teacher, 
advised him to study grammar. On hearing that there was a 
Kirkham's grammar to be had only six miles away, he started off, 
walking the twelve miles, there and back, in an incredibly short while. He soon 
announced himself as a candidate for the first time. Before election the Black Hawk 
War broke out and Lincoln was one of the first to enlist. He was elected captain, 
which gave him more real pleasure than any other honor ever conferred upon him, as 
he said when he was a candidate for the Presidency. 

While he was captain, Lincoln saved the life of an old Indian by risking his own. 
He won and kept the respect of his company ; when it disbanded he re-enlisted as a 
private. He did not even witness an actual battle, and when the war was over he 
walked several hundred miles, from Wisconsin back to New Salem. While in 
Congress he made a humorous speech in which he related his experiences in 
the Black Hawk War. 

It is often stated that he met Lieutenant JeflTerson Davis at this time, but, after 
careful investigation, this romantic story has been officially denied. Davis was 
absent on furlough, so that his path and Lincoln's did not cross so early in life. 



1^^^' 




'Boys, don't shoot a defenseless Indian!" 



SUN. 



MON. 



MAY 

TUES. WED. THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



9 10 11 12 13 14 15 



1809 




1909 




STOREKEEPER, POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR 

OON after his return from the Black Hawk War the election took 
place, and Lincoln was defeated — the only time, he said afterward, 
with pride, that he ever lost on a direct vote of the people. An 
opportunity offered, and he went into the storekeeping business as 
one of the firm of Berry & Lincoln. Berry drank too much of 
the liquor they had in stock, and Lincoln, who had found a set 
of " Blackstone " in an old barrel of rubbish, devoted himself to studying law. 
While in this store Lincoln was appointed postmaster. The salary was small, but the 
privilege of reading the newspapers was one of the perquisites of the office. The 
tall postmaster used to tramp many a mile delivering letters — thus anticipating the 
modern "rural free delivery," and "special delivery," also. 

Berry drank himself to death. The firm failed, the 
store " winked out," as Lincoln termed it, leaving him with 
his partner's and predecessors' debts, which he was too honest 
to evade, though he might easily have avoided payment. 
This great burden, which he called the " National Debt," 
weighed upon him for nearly twenty years, but he finally paid 
off" " the uttermost farthing." 

While Lincoln was debating whether to study law or 
learn the blacksmith's trade, John 
Calhoun, the county surveyor^ 
offered him the position of deputy 
surveyor. He knew nothing 
about surveying but he procured 
a copy of " Flint and Gibson " and learned the science, 
with the aid of the good schoolmaster. Mentor Graham. 
He surveyed many of the towns in the neighborhood, and 
it is said that when Lincoln was surveying in a neighbor- 
hood, business stopped, and all the men of the place took 
a holiday, helping the county deputy for the sake of 
enjoying Lincoln's quaint quips and funny stories. 

Mentor Graham. 





MAY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



16 17 18 19 20 21 22 



1809 




1909 



LINCOLN'S "LOVED AND LOST" 




HILE boarding at Rutledge's Tavern Lincoln became acquainted 
with Ann, the proprietor's lovely daughter, who, he soon learned, 
was engaged to be married to a young man called John McNeil. 
After her affianced had gone east to take care of his aged father, 
Miss Rutledge learned that his real name was McNamar. Although 
Lincoln appealed to her heart she felt bound by her engagement to 
McNamar, who had even ceased to write to her. Finally, after months of weary 
waiting, Ann Rutledge yielded to Lincoln's devotion, and they were believed to 
be betrothed. But the protracted strain proved too great for Ann's high-strung, 
sensitive nature. In August, 1835, she died, but her beautiful image never left 
the heart of Abraham Lincoln. He was utterly unstrung by his passionate grief. 
It was then that he learned to love the poem of William Knox, always thereafter 
a favorite, entitled : 

" Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? " 

William O. Stoddard, the only secretary to President Lincoln still living in 
this Centenary Year, writes of the grief-stricken lover at this time : 

"He had been to that hour a man of marvellous power and self-control, but when they 
came and told him she was dead, his heart and will, and even his brain itself, gave way. He 
was frantic for a time, seeming even to lose the sense of his own identity, and all New Salem 
said that he was insane. He piteously moaned and raved : 

" ' I never can be reconciled to have the snow, rain and storms beat upon her grave.' " 




^^^* 



MAY 

MON. TUES. WED. THUR. FRI. 

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 



SUN, 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




MEMORIAL DAY 

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. 

OUR score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth op this 
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the 
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in 
a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so con- 
ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
battle field ot that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of 
that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense 
we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor 
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say 
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be 
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so 
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to tliat cause for 
which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 




The State Capitol at Vandalia. 



MAY 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 



30 31 



( 



1809 




1909 



THE LEGISLATURE AND LIGHTNING 




N 1834 Lincoln was elected to the State Legislature. His friend Smoot, 
a relative of the present Senator from Utah, loaned him $200 — to make 
himself presentable at Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois. Lincoln 
was the leader of the "Long Nine," through whose influence the 
capital was removed to Springfield. 

Although abolitionism was generally execrated, Abraham Lincoln 
and Dan Stone braved the scorn of the other legislators, and of their 
constituents, by drawing up and signing the " Lincoln-Stone Protest " against slavery, 
on the ground that it was " founded on injustice and bad policy." 

Many stories are told of Lincoln in these campaigns for the State Assembly. 

Once he and his rival called to interview a farmer who was absent, so both besieged 
the farmer's wife for her influence. His rival insisted on doing the milking, and only had 
the woman thank him, because it allowed her to improve the opportunity to talk with 
Mr. Lincoln ! 

Another time he was told by the men in the harvest field that they would not vote 
for a man who could not " hold his own " with the cradle. Mr. Lincoln cut the widest 
swath and distanced them all, gaining thereby, it was stated, no less than thirty votes. 

His fame as a political orator brought him an invitation to speak in Springfield, 
whither his staunch friends — " the Clary's Grove Boys" — went to applaud and look out 
for the rights of their hero and champion. 

George Forquer, a wealthy and pompous politician of Springfield, once a Whig, had 
turned Democrat, and received a Land Office position 
worth $3,000 a year. Some one had pointed out 
Forquer 's house to Lincoln, for it was furnished with 
the only lightning-rod in town. That night Forquer 
attacked the "young upstart from New Salem." 
Lincoln promptly responded : 

"The gentleman commenced his speech by saying that 
I must be taken down. I am not so young in years as I am 
in the tricks and trades of the politician, but, live long or 
die young, I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, 
change my politics, and, with the change receive an office 
worth $3,000.00 a 3'ear, and then feel obliged to erect a 
lightning-rod over viy home to protect a guilty conscience 
from an offended God !" 

That lightning stroke blasted Forquer's political prospects. 




JUNE 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. 

= = 12 3 4 5 



SAT. 



( 



1809 




1909 




REMOVAL TO SPRINGFIELD 

S a member of the State Legislature, Lincoln, encouraged by Major 
John T. Stuart, whom he had met in the Black Hawk War, con- 
tinued the study of law. Stuart lent him books and advised him 
in his work. Farmers along the road between New Salem and 
Springfield used to see a tall, shabbily dressed young man pass to 
and fro with books under both arms and another open before him, 
studying as he strode by. Thus some of Lincoln's lessons in law were eighteen 

miles long ! 

The young law student applied his knowledge in petty cases before his friend, 
Bowling Green, Justice of the Peace at New Salem. He made no charge, of course, 
for this trial practice. He always delighted in accommodating and helping others. 

Legislator Lincoln's leadership in the removal of the State Capital from Vandalia 
to Springfield made the "Long Nine" and others desirous of having him reside in 
Springfield. His friend Stuart offered to take him in as law partner as soon as he 
was admitted to the bar, which took place in April, 1837. 

In March, that year, after Legislature had adjourned, Lincoln sold his surveying 
instruments, packed his few clothes, books and other effects into his saddle bags, 
borrowed a horse of Bowling Green, and left New Salem and all the friends he had 
found during six years' sojourn there. He hitched the horse before the store of 
Joshua F. Speed, who was destined to become his dearest friend. 

" Say, Speed," he asked, " how much will a bed, blankets, and so forth, cost me?" 

Speed reckoned it up. " Seventeen dollars or so," he said. 

" I'd no idee 'twould cost half of that ! I can't pay so much. If you can wait 
till Christmas, and I make any money, I'll pay you up ; if I don't, I can't," was 
Lincoln's dubious reply. 

Speed was struck with a sudden thought. " I've got a 
bed big enough for two. You're welcome to half of it till 
you can do better." 

"Where is it?" asked Lincoln. 

"Upstairs," said Speed, pointing ; " turn to your right, 
over in the corner." 

The newcomer went up. Speed heard the saddle bags 
drop in the right corner. Lincoln came down, and said, 
with beaming face : 

" Well, Speed, I've moved !" 

JUNE 




SUN. 



JWON. 



TUBS. 



8 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



10 11 12 



1809 




1909 




THE FIRST YEARS IN SPRINGFIELD 

TUART & Lincoln's partnership was dissolved in 1 841, when Lincoln 
was invited to share in the more difficult and exacting business of Judge 
Stephen T. Logan, one of the greatest lawyers of the Springfield bar. 
Many are the stories told of the young attorney during these four happy- 
go-lucky years of his novitiate— how Baddeley, an Englishman, judging 
only by appearances, felt insulted because Stuart had sent such a gawky 
young man to conduct his important case ; how, looking down from 
his room above the court-room, and seeing his friend, E. D. Baker, about to be roughly 
handled by some infuriated auditors, Lincoln came down through the trap-door, blazing 
with indignation, and brandishing the water-pitcher, demanded free speech; how Lincoln 
and Douglas came into conflict on topics of temperance and politics, nearly twenty years 
before their great debates ; how he won a case from the attorney who was soon to be his 
partner, by calling attention to Logan's shirt, which was open in the back, implying that 
the arguments of a man who did not know how to put on his own shirt should not carry 
much weight with a sensible jury ; how, even then, Lincoln was ever the champion of 
the oppressed and wronged ; how the bank cashier handed Lincoln — a poor young lawyer 
—$30,000 one day, "without a scratch of the pen," to use as a tender in a legal formality; 
and how, years after the closing of Lincoln's store— and even the village of New Salem 
had ceased to exist — a government agent, tracing the former postmaster to Springfield, 
presented a claim for a little over $17 still due the United States from little New Salem 
post-office. Some friends, hearing the demand, and knowing 
something of the young attorney's struggles through poverty 
and privations, were alarmed at his unfortunate predicament, and 
offered to pay the claim for him. 

Lincoln said nothing ; he went over to a corner of the office, 
pulled out his little trunk from under the old lounge on which 
he slept, fished out a cotton rag, opened it and counted out the 
exact sum demanded by the government official, the very coins 
which he had received, four or five years before, in New Salem, 
remarking quietly : 

" I never use anybody's money but my own." 




JUNE 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 



( 



t 



1809 




1909 




THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER 
DID RUN SMOOTH" 

HKN Lincoln had been in Springfield two or three years, Stuart's 
cousin, a Miss Todd, bright, vivacious and cultivated, came from 
Louisville, Kentucky, to live with her sister, the wife of Ninian W. 
Edwards, one of the " Long Nine." Miss Todd was a social leader 
and exceedingly ambitious. From girlhood she had foretold that she 
would one day be mistress of the White House. Douglas was one 
of her admirers, and it is said that he was a suitor for her hand. 
Young Lincoln, dazzled and charmed by her wit and brilliancy, soon became her 
accepted lover. But, as is often the case, there were misunderstandings, and the en- 
gagement was broken. Lincoln was remorseful and disconsolate. It is claimed that he 
became almost insane and forsook his seat in the Legislature. One historian states that 
Lincoln was at fault because he even failed to appear at his own marriage, when 
the supper was ready and the wedding guests were waiting ! But this has been proven 
to be a malicious figment of the brain of Lincoln's disappointed friend and partner, 
Herndon, who, for revenge, started several atrociously false and injurious stories about 
Lincoln which have, unfortunately, gained a certain currency among those who wish 
to think evil of Abraham Lincoln. 

Ill and unhappy, Lincoln visited his friend Speed, in Kentucky, and came back 
in better condition. He wrote for the local newspaper a humorous criticism of James 
Shields, the State Auditor, about a political matter, as if it were a letter fronr 
" Rebecca of the Lost Townships." This created considerable amusement, and two 
young women, Mar>- Todd and her friend, Julia Jayne, followed this with another 
letter, lacking in humor but sharp in point and satire. Shields, a vain and conceited 
little Irishman, was furious and demanded the name of the writer. Lincoln told the 
editor to give his name only, and vShields challenged him to a duel. Lincoln felt 
obliged to accept, and chose ridiculous weapons. When the two came face to face, 
explanations became possible and the absurd duel was avoided. Lincoln's conduct 
during this humiliating episode showed that 
he had no intention of injuring Shields. 
Also, his lady's heart must have softened 
toward the man who risked his life to shield 
her, and the marriage of Abraham Lincoln 
and Mary Todd took place in the autumn 
of 1842, in the beautiful home of the Hon. 
N. W. Edwards. The Episcopal marriage 
form was u.sed, and doughty old Judge Tom 
Browne, who was a guest, on hearing Lincoln 
repeat, " With my worldly goods I thee 
endow," blurted out: "Grace to Goshen, 

T innnln thf ctotntp fix-pc nil fliofl" Globe Tavern, where the Lincolns beean their married 

l^mcoin, ine SiaiUie nxes an mat : ,i,p paying $4 a week board for both. 

JUNE 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. TMURS. FRI. SAT. 

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 




i 



1809 




1909 




IN CONGRESS AND AFTERWARD 

INCOLN took an enthusiastic part in the " Log Cabin " campaign 
of 1840, when Harrison and Tyler were elected. Also in the 
campaigns of 1844 to 1846, working hard for others, until he was 
elected to Congress himself, defeating Peter Cartwright, the famous 
and eccentric backwoods preacher. 

His life in Washington was very simple. Pie boarded on Capitol 
Hill with a woman named Spriggs, where other congressmen, who afterward became 
celebrated, were guests also. He made several humorous speeches attacking General 
Cass — one describing his own experiences in the Black Hawk War. He also moved 
the "Spot Resolutions," calling President Polk to account for his action in con- 
nection with the Mexican War. 

Lincoln was soon known as the best story teller of the Capitol. Daniel Webster 
used to invite him to his house, and Lincoln transacted some legal business for 
Webster, who maintained that Lincoln did not charge enough for this service. 
At the close of his term Lincoln made speeches in New England and visited 
Niagara Falls. He wrote a lecture on the great cataract, from which the following 
extract may be quoted: 

"When Columbus first sought this continent — when Christ suffered on the cross — when 
Moses led Israel through the Red Sea — nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his 
Maker — then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. 

"The eyes of that species of e.xtinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have 
gazed upon Niagara, as ours do now. . . Niagara is as strong and fresh to-day as ten 
thousand years ago. . . The mammoth and the mastodon, so long dead that fragments of 
their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara— in that long, 
long time never still for a moment, never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested." 




Daniel Webster. 



JUNE 

SUN. ftAON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

27 28 29 30 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN'S INVENTION AND THE KINDNESS OF 

HIS HEART 

FTER his return from Congress Lincoln settled down with his law partner, 
Herndon, determined to eschew politics and devote himself to his law 
practice. He traveled the Eighth Circuit, often rooming with Judge 
David Davis, who long afterward became President of the Senate, and 
on the death of Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, virtual Vice-President 
of the United States. 

In 1849 Lincoln whittled out a model and applied for a patent on 
his invention for buoying river vessels over shoals, evidently evolved from his experiences 
on Rutledge's dam at New Salem, and as flatboatman and pilot on the fluctuating rivers 
of Illinois. When he showed his model to a friend supposed to be something of a patent 
authority, he said he "guessed it would work where the ground was a little damp!" 

Lincoln could never be induced to charge as much for his services as the other 
members of the bar thought proper, and even Judge Davis had to labor with him on the 
subject. Many stories are told, during this period, of his kindness of heart to clients, 
children, and even to lower orders of the animal creation — of a case where Lamon (also a 
partner and biographer), accepted a retainer of $250 for the case of a wealthy but demented 
girl, and Lincoln made him return half of it ; of a little girl weeping at the gate because 
the hackman had failed to call for her trunk, and Lincoln promptly shouldered it and put 
both trunk and girl on the train, and sent her off for her first outing on the cars, smiling 
through her tears ; of a pig stuck in the mud squealing helplessly, when Lincoln and his 
law comrades passed on their way to the 
next court -the others laughed over the pig's 
plight after they had passed, but its helpless 
cries rang in Lincoln's ears till he could bear 
it no longer, so he returned and with one 
fence-rail for a fulcrum and another for a 
lever, pried the pig out of mire, and traveled 
the rest of that day alone, muddy but con- 
tent ; of the time when he "wasted" hours 
hunting for the nest out of which two young 
birds had fallen, while his sneering com- 
panions went on without him. Lincoln 
could not see suffering in man or beast 

without doing all he could to relieve it. Model of Lincoln's invention in the Patent Office. 




JULY 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



1 



FRL 



SAT. 



< 



1809 




1909 



THE FOURTH OF JULY 

THE EMANCIPATION GROUP. 



Amidst thy sacred effigies 

Of old renown give place, 

O city, Freedom loved ! to his 

Whose hand unchained a race 



O symbol of God's will on earth 

As it is done above ! 
Bear witness to the cost and worth 

Of justice and of love. 



Take the worn frame, that rested not 
Save in a martyr's grave ; 

The care-lined face, that time forgot. 
Bent to the kneeling slave. 



Stand in thy place and testify 

To coming ages long 
That truth is stronger than a lie 

And righteousness than wrong. 



Let man be free ! The mighty word 
He spake was not his own ; 

An impulse from the Highest stirred 
These chiseled lips alone. 



The cloudy sign, the fiery guide, 

Along his pathway ran, 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 



We rest in peace where these sad eyes 
Saw peril, strife and pain ; 

His was the nation's sacrifice, 
And ours the priceless gain. 




Statue of Emancipation, Florence, Italy. 



SUN. 



MON. 



JULY 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



8 9 10 



t 



1809 




1909 




DEATH OF THOMAS LINCOLN AND ABRAHAM'S 
KINDNESS TO THE FAMILY 

ILLIAM G. GREENE, once a companion in Offutt's store, while on a 
journey in that direction, called at Lincoln's father's home, at Goose 
Nest Prairie, Coles County, and delivered to the old man a letter from 
Abraham. Thomas Lincoln was still living then in a rude and primitive, 
almost needy, fashion. But he was self -satisfied, and continued his dis- 
approval of the studious habits of his only son. He remarked to Greene: 
"I s'pose Abe's still a-foolin' hisself with eddication. I tried to 
""stop it, but he's got that fool idee in his head, an' it can't be got out." 
In 1 85 1, the poor old man, broken by many hardships and privations, was taken 
with his last illness. Lincoln wrote to his stepbrother, John Johnston: 

"I sincerely hope Father may yet 
recover his health. Tell him to con- 
fide in our great and merciful Maker, 
who will not turn away from him in 
any extremity. He notes the fall of 
the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of 
our heads, and He will not forget the 
dying man who puts his trust in Him. 
Say to him that, if we could meet now, 
it is doubtful whether it would be 
more painful than pleasant, but if it 
is his lot to go now, he will soon have 
a joyful meeting with loved ones gone 
before, where the rest of us, through 
the mercy of God, hope ere long to 
join them." 

The house. Coles County. Illinois, in which Lincoln's father died. ThomaS Lincoln died that year, 

at the age of 73, and Abraham did all his still straitened circumstances would permit in 
sending financial aid to the family. His stepbrother, instead of being a support to his aged 
mother, was worse than a burden to her, and to Lincoln, who wrote Johnston several letters, 
protecting the rights and interests of the worthless fellow's own mother. These letters 
are models of masterful kindness and gentle firmness. 

To the first $500 fee Lincoln received he added 
$250, which he actually had to borrow, to invest in a 
quarter section of land to make his stepmother's de- 
clining years more comfortable. Lincoln, when in 
prcsperity, never neglected his "step" relations. 
Several good stories are told of his giving money to 
his good-for nothing stepbrother, and of his leaving 
the comforts and comradeship of a hotel, even during 
the exhaustions of his great debates with Douglas, to 
walk miles through rain and mud to call upon some 
distant relative. Once, when it was suggested that he 
needed the rest and shelter, he seemed shocked at the 
gross impiety of such a thought, exclaiming : 

"Why, Aunt's heart would be broken if I 

should leave town without calling upon her." interior of Thomas Lincoln's Illinois home. 





SUN. 



MON. 



JULY 

TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. 



SAT. 



U 12 13 14 15 16 17 



c 



1809 




1909 




IN COURT AND AT HOME 

INCOIyN'S life in court and at home was not only above reproach, but 
full of sunny kindness. His devotion to his boys reached a degree of 
doting indulgence. While at home he seemed always to have them on 
his lap, on his shoulders or clinging to the tails of his long coat. 

Away from home, " on the circuit," he was the best of company. 

Though he told many stories, he was a good listener and greatly enjoyed 

the stories of others. He was not a court fool or clown. He often told 

stories before court opened, and was reproved by his friend, Judge Davis, on one occasion, 

because the members of the bar were too much interested in Lincoln — especially when the 

judge himself was unable to hear what was going on ! 

One day the clerk of the court laughed outright, and the judge ordered him to fine 
himself $5 for his misdemeanor. The clerk did so, remarking, 
' ' That story was well worth the money ! ' ' 

When there was an opportunity, the judge whispered to the 
clerk, asking, " What was it that I Incoln was telling?" 

The clerk repeated the tale. The judge, off his guard, laughed 
outright. 

"Remit your fine !" he said to the clerk. 

While he was a plain country lawyer, he made some remarkable 
comparisons. He likened a brainless and wordy legal opponent to 
"a trifling little steamboat on the Sangamon, with a seven-foot 
whistle on a five-foot boiler, so, every time the whistle blew, the 

boat stopped ' ' — meaning that while the young 

lawyer was talking, his mental processes 

ceased. 

One night he came home late from ' ' off 
the circuit," and found that his wife had had 
the house extended, as a surprise, from a one- 
and-a-half story to a two story structure, 
during his absence of several weeks. He pre- 
tended not to know where he lived, and rang 
up a neighbor to inquire what had become of 
his home. 

Mrs. Lincoln once said of her husband : 

" Mr. Lincoln was the kindest man and 

most loving husband and father in the world." 





Lincoln's home, Springrfield, Illinois. 



JULY 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 



i 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN RE-ENTERS THE ARENA 

EPEALING the Missouri Compromise, in connection with the 
much-talked-of Kansas-Nebraska bill, precipitated the slavery question, 
which had been held in solution for fifty years or more — ever since 
the invention of the cotton-gin had made slave labor so valuable to 
the southern States. This repeal was due, in a large measure at 
least, to Stephen A. Douglas's influence and exertions. The furious 
discussions of slavery brought Lincoln back into the political arena. With all the 
zeal and earnestness of his nature he resisted the aggressions of the pro-slavery people 
all about him, tor southern Illinois was peopled by slavery sympathizers from 
Virginia, Kentucky and other southern States. 

He delivered some of his great speeches during these years, maintaining that 
"slavery is wrong and should be dealt with as wrong ;" and that "a house divided 
against itself cannot stand — and this nation cannot exist half slave and half free — it 
must be all one or all the other." Sometimes he came into direct conflict with Judge 
Douglas. On one occasion, referring to Douglas's statement that he would " trust 
in Providence" to bring about a certain issue in behalf of slavery, Lincoln said : 

" The Judge's trusting in Providence reminds me of the old woman who had 
been run away with by a fractious horse. She said she ' trusted in Providence till the 
breechin' broke ' — then she ' didti't knoiv what on airth to do! '''''' 




JULY 

MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 



SUN. 



1809 




» 



1909 




THE "LOST SPEECH" AND THE VOTES FOR LINCOLN 

FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 

HE Bloomington Convention, in 1856, was a disorganized aSair. 
The Whigs and others eyed each other askance. Some one was 
needed to strike the ke)'-note of harmony. Lincoln was called upon 
and made a speech that harmonized discordant elements. It was of 
such electric eloquence, that while it galvanized and fused all parties 
into solid Republicanism, the reporters utterly forgot to take notes. 
It came to be called Lincoln's " Lost Speech." Politicians who heard it, whispered 
to one another : 

" That is the greatest speech ever made in Illinois ; it puts Lincoln on the 
track for the Presidency !" 

Twenty days after this convention, Lincoln was with Judge Davis and Henry C. 
Whitney, at Urbana, Illinois. As the dining-room gong of their hotel annoyed them 
early in the morning, Lincoln was deputized to put it out of harm's way. He left 
the court-room earlier than the rest to carry out this purpose (and the gong) in secret. 
When he had the offending alarm under his coat and was slipping out of the 
dining-room, his two companions came rushing in with a Chicago newspaper, which 
they brandished in great excitement. 

" Great business, this," laughed Judge Davis, " for a man who aspires to be Vice- 
President of the United States!" 

Lincoln stared ; his companions, after bantering him awhile, told him that the 

first Republican Convention, then in session in Philadelphia (which nominated 

Fremont and Dayton), had given him no votes for the Vice-Presidential nomination. 

" Surely, it ain't me," said Lincoln, carelessly, "there's another great man named 

Lincoln down in Massachusetts. I reckon it's him." 




' w 



AUGUST 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. TMURS. FRI. SAT. 

12 3 4 5 6 7 



( 



1809 




1909 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 




insulting, 



X 1S58 Lincoln was nominated to represent Illinois in the Senate, in 
Douglas's place. He and the " little Giant," as Douglas was called, 
made the most memorable canvass in history. The question of slavery 
was discussed everywhere. Lincoln challenged Douglas to join in a 
series of debates, and the " little Giant " reluctantly accepted. Seven 
towns, in all sections of the State, were chosen, and the dates ranged 
from August to October. The average attendance at these debates was 
estimated at 10,000. Debate day was a holiday for each region. 
Thousands of people came scores of miles ; many migrated from adjoining counties and 
States, and encamped round about the places where the debates were held. There were 
demonstrations in favor of each of the rival candidates, and all over Illinois there 
were processions, picnics, fairs, barbecues, floral parades, bands, and so on. 

Senator Douglas was a skilled and polished speaker, and he was among his friends. 
The railroads placed special cars and even trains at his disposal. He had everything to 
lose and Lincoln had everything to win. Douglas began with a domineering, if not 
demeanor towards his almost unknown opponent. Lincoln's best friends 
thought his challenging Douglas was a grand blunder. But 
Lincoln was deeply, thoroughly, in earnest. He told but few 
stories. His voice rang, high and clear, to the outer edges of 
the great throngs, but Douglas soon became hoarse, speaking 
less distinctly, and with great difficulty. 

Lincoln's sincerity, logic, quick-wittedness and good 

nature won the day. He often parried and turned back 

Douglas's savage blows upon himself like a boomerang. 

Douglas propounded a set of questions for Lincoln to answer. 

Lincoln answered these and asked Douglas several questions. 

Among these was one which forced Douglas to interpret the 

Dred Scott decision. Lincoln's friends said, " If you ask 

that you will lose the Senatorship. " 

Lincoln replied, " Yes : but the fight 

of i860 will be worth a hundred 

of this." Douglas walked right 

into Lincoln's trap. He answered 

"the Freeport " question to suit his hearers in Illinois, but 

offended the South— for the whole country was now breathlessly 

watching the struggle. 

Douglas was elected to the Senate, though a greater 
popular vote was polled for Lincoln principles. 

Lincoln took his defeat gracefully. He did not pretend 
that he was not disappointed. He .said he was " like the boy 
that stumped his toe — it hurt too bad to laugh and he was too 

big to cry." Lincoln in '58. 





AUGUST 

MON. TUBS. WED. THUR5. FRI. 

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 



SUN. 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




SEVERAL CELEBRATED CASES 

■i. LINCOLN tried a number of celebrated cases. He was keenly 
disappointed, in 1855, to be left out of the great McCoruiick Reaper case. 
It was the first time he met Edwin M. Stanton, who took no pains to 
conceal his contempt for "the long-armed gorilla who wore a linen 
duster on which the perspiration had splotched stains like the map 
of the continent!" Lincoln felt that Stanton, who appeared in his 
stead, had " added insult to injury." 

Then there was the case he won for the Illinois Central Railroad. 
He presented his modest bill of $2000, in person, while in Chicago. The official 
expressed surprise at the "exorbitant" amount, and exclaimed : 

"Why, that's as much as Web.ster or a. Jirsl-class lawj'er would have charged !" 
As George B. McClellan was vice-president of this road soon after this, it is often 
asserted that it was McClellan who made this remark. But it could not have been 
McClellan, for he was in Europe at that time. 

Stung by the insult, Lincoln consulted fellow-members of the bar, increased the bill 
to $5000, sued the road and collected the full amount, which was a reasonable charge. 
Herndon, Lincoln's partner, naively conmients : 
"Lincoln gave me my half." 

There was a great case in which a grandson of his former opponent, Peter Cart- 
wright, the pioneer Methodist preacher, was tried for murder. His delicacy and skill in 
questioning the eccentric old preacher went far toward gaining the verdict. 

Perhaps the most celebrated case of all was that in which the son of his old friend 
Armstrong, the Clary's Grove bully, was on trial for his life. The chief witness testified 
to seeing Anderson when he struck the fatal blow. Lincoln drew from the witness the 
statement that he saw it by moonlight, even telling how full and how high the moon was at 
the time. Then Lincoln produced an almanac, proving that there was no moon at that time! 
Therefore all the witness's evidence was discredited. To this day it is sometimes stated 
that Lincoln ' ' doctored ' ' an old almanac 
to free his client. This ab.surd story — for 
judge, jury and opposing counsel could 
easily have detected any attempt at impos- 
ture — has been told about every other great 
criminal lawyer in the United States. 

This dramatic incident has been differ- 
ently described by many writers, and it has 
been used in at least one work of fiction 
("The Graysons," by Edward Eggleston). 
The gratitude of the young prisoner, whose 
cradle Lincoln had rocked, while a homele.ss 
guest at the Armstrongs', and of his aged 
mother, Hannah Armstrong, must have 
given Lincoln intense satisfaction. 



'ililKixi 




AUGUST 

MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 



SUN 



( 



1809 




1909 



JOHN BROWN, THE COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH, 
AND THE BRINGING IN OF THE RAILS 




OLLOWING his great debates with Douglas, Lincoln was in demand 
to speak in Kansas and Ohio. " Bleeding Kansas" was the name given 
to that territory, because of the keen conflict there between the so- 
called " Border Ruffians " and " Black Republicans." It was here 
that "John Brown of Osawatomie " began his strange campaign in 
behalf of the slaves. In October, 1859, he made his brave, but fool- 
hardy raid and took possession of Harper's Ferry. Douglas and 
others tried to fasten the responsibility for this foolish enterprise upon the newly- 
formed Republican party. 

Lincoln was invited to follow Douglas with a series of speeches in Ohio. He 
was also engaged to speak in Cooper Institute, New York City. This speech was one 
of the greatest triumphs of his career. In it he replied to some of Douglas's sophisms, 
and virtually silenced the statements regarding John Brown and the " Black Republi- 
cans." He made speeches in New England, and when he returned home he was 
greeted as the Republican candidate for the Presidency. He laughed at the idea — in 
preference to Seward and Chase, those justly distinguished and popular representatives 
of the party. 

But the Republican Convention of Illinois, after John Hanks marched in with 
two little black walnut rails from Sangamon bottom, stampeded for Lincoln, as the 
party's only choice in his state. 

There was a grand gathering of the clans and factions at Chicago. Judge David 
Davis and Norman B. Judd were in charge of the Lincoln " boom," as it would now be 
called. It was deemed necessary, by those astute politicians, to make a bargain with the 
Cameron delegation from Pennsylvania to insure Lincoln's nomination. This necessity 
was reported to him at his home in Springfield but he promptly telegraphed back : 
" I authorize no bargains and will be bound by none.'^ 




John Brown. 



AUGUST 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 



( 



3 



1809 




1909 



LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



" Springfield, December 20, 1S59. 

"J. W. Fell, Esq., 

" My Dear Sir : Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much 
of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made of it, 
I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond the material. . . . 

"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were 
both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families — second families, perhaps I should say. 
My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks. My 
paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, 
where, a year or two later, he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when 
he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to 
Virginia from Berks County, Peiuisylvania. . . . 

" My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and grew up literally 
without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, 
in my eighth year. . . . There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but 
no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond ' readin', writin' and cipherin' ' to 
the rule of three. . . . There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for 
education. ... Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. ... I 
have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education 
I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. . . . 

" I was raised to farm work, which I contiinied till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one 
I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, where I remained a year 
as a sort of clerk, in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War ; and I was elected a 
captain of volunteers, which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went 
the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year ( 1832) and was beaten — 
the only time I was ever beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial 
elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this 
legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 
I was elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a 
candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, 
practised law more assiduously than ever before. Always a 
Whig in politics, and generally on the electoral tickets, making 
active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What 
I have done since is pretty well known. 

" If any personal description is thought desirable, it may 
be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly ; lean in 
flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds, 
dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No 

other marks and brands recollected. '' f trn'"»\i», ^ ' \j ■ji 

"Yours truly, '^VVWIN. feJ' 

"A. Lincoln." ^^'f^ ' ^' 




AUGUST 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



29 30 31 



FRL 



SAT. 



( 



1809 




1909 




NOMINATED AND ELECTED PRESIDENT 

HE Convention that met in the specially built "Wigwam" at Chicago, in 
May, i860, nominated Abraham Lincoln (even over Seward, the great 
statesman and party leader) gave over to frenzied demonstrations of joy, 
which caught like wild-fire. As Douglas said, there wasn't "a tar- 
barrel left in the whole state." The Rail-splitter campaign was one of 
thrilling enthusiasm. The "Wide Awakes" of '60 were organized. 
It is a lucid commentary on the time that one collector now possesses 
more than eight hundred different songs and musical compositions 
about Abraham Lincoln. • j jx j 

A committee notified the candidate in his plain home in Springfield. Friends offered 
to supply liquors for refreshment on that occasion, but Lincoln said : 

" No, we have never had such things in our home and I am not going to begin now." 

A native of England, a Springfield neighbor of Lincoln, was astonished when he 
heard of the nomination, and exclaimed : 

' ' What ! Abe Lincoln nominated for President of the United States ? A man that 
buys a ten-cent beefsteak for breakfast, and carries it home himself ! Can it be possible ? ' ' 

The opposition made no end of fun of such a candidate—" a nullity," " a third-rate 
country lawyer" who had succeeded only as a "rail-splitter" and in getting himself 
called ' ' Honest Abe, ' ' but had been defeated for the Senate. They sneered at his ' ' coarse, 
clumsy jokes," and said he did not know how to wear clothes, and often sat in his shirt 
sleeves. He was of no family, did not know Latin and Greek, and had never traveled. 

Manufacturers all over the country made him presents of hats and other articles of 
apparel. Mr. Lincoln laughed al these gifts and, one day, exclaimed : 

" Well, wife, if nothing else comes out of this scrape, we are going to have some 
clothes, aren't we ? " 

He used to laugh over the apology of a newsboy who was selling his photograph — 
one taken with tousled hair, which was his best known portrait at that time. Lincoln 
liked to imitate the boy's shrill, nasal treble : 

"Here's your Old Abe ! He'll look better when he gets his hair combed!" 

Lincoln's chief concern .seemed to be lest his home town should go against him. and 
was deeply grieved because so many Springfield ministers were using their influence in 
favor of his opponents and slavery ! He said : 

' ' These men will find they have not read their 
Bibles aright." 

Election day fell on the 6th of November. 
Lincoln voted the ticket with the " President " cut 
off. He spent the evening in the telegraph office. 
He seemed gratified when he heard New York had 
gone for him — but expressed keener satisfaction 
over the vote of his own precinct. About midnight 
he went home and, finding his wife asleep, aroused 
her with : 

" Mary ! Mary ! Mary ! we re elected ! " 

"The Wiirwam.' 




SUN. 



MON. 



SEPTEMBER 

TUES. WED. TMURS. FRI. SAT. 

= 12 3 4 



( 



( 



J 



1809 




1909 




PRESIDENT-ELECT 

HORTLY after Lincoln's election, the Southern States showed that it was 

regarded by them as a danger signal. They began secession agitation at 

once, refusing to submit to the rule of a " Black Republican " President. 

Many of the Southern people believed him to be a monster, an ogre, or a 

mulatto. Seven States seceded before Inauguration Day and elected Jefferson 

Davis President. Several members of Buchanan's Cabinet were secessionists 

and did all they could to wreck the government before resigning. Then 

staunch and loyal Democrats like Stanton and General John A. Dix did all they could to save 

the day. But it was too late. Lincoln, the President-elect, looked on, powerless. He said : 

" Buchanan is giving the case away and I can't help it " 

As the first Republican President, he was hounded and beset by office-seekers. He 
exclaimed, one day : 

" I feel as if I were renting rooms while the house is on fire !" 

He began at once to form his Cabinet. The only member who was not of his choosing was 
Simon Cameron, Secretary of War. Cameron was the result of a bargain Judge Davis made 
with Pennsylvania, against Lincoln's instructions. 

"Of course, " all Sangamon County" came to Springfield to say good-bye to "Honest 
Abe " Lincoln. One day, while busy with several distinguished gentlemen from other States, 
an old woman came in to visit Mr. Lincoln, who, as soon as he saw her, hurried to meet her, took 
both her hands in his, gave her the seat of honor, and introduced the gentlemen to her, telling 
them how kind she had been to him in days gone by. The old woman made him a present of 
a pair of huge socks she had knit for him, and he said, with tears in his eyes : 

"Aunt Sally, you couldn't have done anything that would have pleased me better. I'll 
take 'em to Washington and wear 'em, and think of you when I do it." 

Then he turned to the gentlemen present, held up the big socks, and said : 
"She got my latitude and longitude about right — didn't she?" 

Almost the last thing he did was to take the journey across the country, fording swollen 
rivers, to visit his father's grave and say good-bye to his dear old stepmother, who survived 
him. On February nth, 1861, the day before his fifty-second birthday, he bade farewell to 
Springfield, making the following speech at the station : 

"My Friends : No one not in my position can appreciate 
the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that 
I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century ; 
here my children were born, and here oue of them lies buried. 
I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves 
upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that which has 
devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. 
He would never have succeeded except for the aid of Divine 
Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I 
cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained 
him, and in the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for 
support ; and I hope you, my friends, will pray that I may 
receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, 
but with which success is certain. Again, I bid you all an 
affectionate farewell." 




Farewell at the Springfield Station. 



SEPTEMBER 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



8 



FRI. 



SAT. 



10 11 



( 



1809 




1909 



THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON AND THE INAUGURAL 




R. LINCOLN made a great many speeches on liis winding way to Wash- 
ington—in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, 
Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, Poughkeepsie, Peekskill, 
New York City, Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Near 
Freedom, Pennsylvania, between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, a freight 
wreck delayed the Presidential train, and Lincoln went out and talked 
to the crowd which quickly assembled. Here he measured with a tall 
coal-heaver and gave him a hearty shake of the hand, as his ' ' equal in 
height." A spectator, who had been watching him through the car-window, said of the 
President-elect : " He is not the kind of man I expected to see, except that he is tall. I 
expected to see a jolly-looking man, but he looked sad enough to be going to his death, 
instead of to be inaugurated President of the United States." 

At Philadelphia Lincoln raised a flag over Independence Hall. Here, in referring 
to the sentiment which gave liberty to this country and hope to the world, he remarked : 
" Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I shall con- 
sider myself the happiest man in the world if I can help to save it. But if this country 
cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I should rather be 
assassinated on this spot than surrender it !" 

He had just been told at his hotel of a plot to assassinate him in Baltimore. He did 
not believe it at first, but the Pinkertons' report was confirmed by one which came from 
Senator Seward in Washington, neither party knowing of the other's discovery. So 
Lincoln consented to go direct from Harrisburg through Baltimore in the night. 

At Harrisburg his son Robert lost the bag containing his Inaugural Address. As he 
had no duplicate or copy of it in any form, and the time before Inauguration Day was so 
short, Lincoln was almost in despair. He met his friend Lamon (who accompanied him 
to Washington and became Marshal of the District of Columbia) and said : 

"Lamon, I guess I have lost my certificate of moral character, written by myself. 
Bob has lost the gripsack containing my Inaugural Address !" 

But it was found after a long search and Lincoln carried the Address in his pocket 
thereafter. He passed through Baltimore the night of the 22nd of February, 1 861, and 
arrived without a mishap in Washington the next morning. He spent the time before the 
4th of March in meeting statesmen and making final ar- 
rangements with certain members of his prospective Cabinet. 
When escorted to the Capitol by President Buchanan, 
who was bowed with age, Lincoln towered above him, and 
seemed taller than ever. He was introduced to the people 
by his friend (the man he came down through the floor 
in Springfield twenty-five years before to defend him in 
the court-room at Springfield), Senator Baker, of Oregon. 
The President-elect, holding his hat in one hand and his 
Inaugural in the other, looked about in vain for a place to 
set his hat down. Senator Douglas, seeing his perplexity, 
stepped forward and took the hat from Mr. Lincoln, and 
said in a loud whisper to the.Jady next to him : 

" If I can't be President, I can at least hold his hat!" 




SEPTEMBER 



SUN. MON. TUBS. 



WED. THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



12 13 14 15 16 17 18 



( 



1809 




1909 



MISUNDERSTOOD AMID WAR'S ALARMS 




HEN Lincoln took the reins of government everything was in a chaotic 
state. The greatest intellects of the country were all at sea. So-called 
statesmen advocated the most hair-brained, foolhardy schemes. The 
President seemed to be standing on the crumbling edge of a volcano 
already in a state of eruption. The members of his official family 
scorned, or, what was still more insulting, patronized him. Blinded, 
each by his own self-importance, none could see that he was their 
superior in manhood, intellect and tact. Cameron, either incapable, or 
worse, hampered and hurt him. Chase never came to the place where he could really 
appreciate Lincoln. Seward made the most undiplomatic and improper propositions, 
offering to run the government alone if the President would 
let him, and would hold the other secretaries off! Lincoln 
answered this unheard-of proposal firmly, yet in the spirit of 
kindness. Secretary Seward was the first to recognize the real 
greatness of his chief. 

While all this was going on, Stanton on the outside, was 
denouncing the President as an imbecile, a gorilla, and so on. 
The first perplexity was the news that Fort Sumter was besieged, 
and likely, any day, to be attacked. An attempt was made to 
relieve the heroic garrison, but it was too late. Sumter was fired 
on and forced to surrender after a valiant resistance of thirty-six 
hours. 

The attack on Sumter roused the North and the South. The 
Confederate war-cry was, " On to Washington !" The Northern 




Secretary Seward. 



slogan was "On to Richmond !' 
men, and the North responded : 
"We are coming. Father 
Abraham ! ' ' 

The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was mobbed 
in Baltimore. Baltimore and Maryland officials waited 
on the President, begging him not to allow Maryland 
soil to be "polluted " by the feet of soldiers marching 
against sister States. Lincoln replied : 

' ' We must have troops ; and as they can neither 
crawl under Maryland, nor fly over it, they must come 
across it ! " 

Washington was in danger of attack and ultimate 
famine. People fled from the city in consternation. 
They advised Mrs. Lincoln to take her three boys and 
seek safety. She bravely refused to do this, saying : 
"I am as safe as Mr. Lincoln, and I shall not 
leave him 1" 



The President called for 75,000 




Mrs. Lincoln. 



SEPTEMBER 

MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 



SUN 



( 



1809 




1909 



"THE TRENT AFFAIR" AND THE APPOINTMENT 

OF STANTON 



UCCESSIVE defeats at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, Fredericksburg and Chan- 
cellorsville gave deep anguish to the great heart of Abraham Lincoln. 
Meantime, the Confederates were courting England's favor. Captain 
Wilkes captured Mason and Slidell, two Confederate Commissioners, 
on the English ship, Trent. The people applauded, but Lincoln saw 
at once that they should be surrendered. His wiser counsels pre- 
vailed, and, though it was a "bitter pill," Mason and Slidell were 
given up, as Hosea Biglow said : 

" We give the critters back, John, 

'Cos Abra'iu thought 'twas right ; 
It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, 




Provokin' us to fight.' 



[Lowell.^ 



After the struggle was over, Lincoln compared his sentiments toward England to 
that of a sick man out in Illinois, as follows : 

" He was told he probably hadn't many days longer to live, and he ought to make 
peace with any enemies he might have. He said the man he hated worst of all was a 
fellow named Brown in the next village, and he guessed he had better begin on him. So 
Brown was sent for, and when he came, the sick man began to say, in a voice as meek as 
Moses's, that he wanted to die at peace with all his fellow creatures, and he hoped he and 
Brown could now shake hands and bury all their enmity. The scene was becoming 
altogether too pathetic for Brown, who had to get out his handkerchief and wipe the 
gathering tears from his eyes. It wasn't long before he melted and gave his hand to his 
neighbor, and they had a regular love-feast of forgiveness. After a parting that would 
have softened the heart of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the door, when the 
sick man rose up on his elbow and called out to him : 

" ' But, see here, Brown, if I should happen to get well, mind, that old grudge stands !' 

" So I thought that if this nation should happen to get well we might want that old 
grudge with England to stand " 

Meantime, the President got rid of the obnoxious War Secretary — forced upon him 
by Davis's bargain at the Convention — by sending him away as Minister to Russia. A 
new Secretary was necessary. Stanton was recommended. He had been capable and 
loyal while in Buchanan's Cabinet. Lincoln remembered Stanton's 
contemptuous treatment of him in the McCormick Reaper case and 
since the beginning of the present administration. But he was too 
great to allow personal feelings to interfere with his sense of duty. 
Other members of the Cabinet objected, saying Stanton would be "im- 
possible." But Lincoln was "reminded of a story" in this connection ; 

"We may have to treat Stanton," the President went on, "as 
they are sometimes obliged to treat a minister I know out West. He 
gets wrought up to so high a pitch of excitement in his prayers and 
exhortations that they have to put bricks into his pockets to keep him 
down. We may have to serve Stanton the same way, but I gue.ss 
we'll let him jump awhile first." in '61. 




SEPTEMBER 

MON. TUBS. WED. THUR5. FRI. 

26 27 28 29 30 = = 



SUN 



SAT. 



( 



3 



1809 




1909 



MOURNING IN THE WHITE HOUSE 




ILLIE Lincoln was nearly twelve )'ears old when he contracted 
a severe cold by being canght in a storm while out riding his pony. 
The phvsician did not consider liis condition dangerous, and advised 
Mrs. Lincoln to go on with a grand reception she was preparing 
to give. Elizabeth Keckley, a seamstress, and a faithful servant in 
the White House describes the event as follows : 

"On the evening of the reception Willie was suddenly taken worse. His 
mother sat by his bedside a long while, holding his feverish hand in her own, 
and watching his labored breathing. Still the doctor claimed there was no cause 
for alarm. . . . The reception was a large and brilliant one, and the rich 
notes of the Marine Band, in the apartments below, came to the sick-room in soft, 
subdued murmers, like the wild, faint sobbing of far-off spirits. . . . 

" During the evening, Mrs. Lincoln came up-stairs several times, and stood by the 
bedside of the suffering boy. She loved him with a mother's heart and her anxiety 
was great. The night passed slowly ; morning came and Willie was worse. He 
lingered a few days and died. . . I assisted in washing and dressing him, and then 
laid him on the bed, when Mr. Lincoln came in. I never saw a man so bowed down 
with grief. He came to the bed, and, lifting the cover from the ftice of his child, 
gazed at it long and earnestly, mnrnniring : 

" ' My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. 
I know that he is better off in Heaven, but then we loved him .so. It was hard — 
hard — to have him die ! ' 

" Great sobs choked his utterance. He bowed his head in his hands, and his 
tall frame was convulsed with emotion. I stood at the foot of the bed, my eyes full 
of tears, looking at the man in silent, awe-stricken wonder. His grief unnerved him, 
and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could 
be so moved ; I shall never forget those solenm moments. 

" Mrs. Lincoln was inconsolable. In one of her paroxysms of grief the President 
kindly bent over his wife, took her by the arm, and gently led her to a window. 
With a solemn, stately gesture, he pointed to the lunatic asylum, saying : 

'"Mother, do you see that large, white building on the hill yonder? Try to 
control your grief, or it will drive you mad, 
and we may have to send yon there.' 

" Mrs. Lincoln was .so completely over- 
whelmed with sorrow that she did not attend 
the funeral. The White House was draped 
in mournino;." 




OCTOBER 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



TMURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



1 



1809 




1909 




McCLELLAN AND LINCOLN TELL STORIES ABOUT 

EACH OTHER 

FFICIALLY my association with the President was very close until 
the severe attack of illness in December, 1861. I was often sent for 
to attend formal and informal Cabinet meetings, and at all hours, 
whenever the President desired to consult with me on any subject. 
Late one night, when be was at my house, I received a telegram from 
an officer commanding a regiment on the upper Potomac. The 
despatch related to some very desperate fighting that had been done during the day, 
describing in magniloquent terms the severe nature of the contest, fierce bayonet 
charges, etc., and terminated with a very small list of killed and wounded, quite out 
of proportion with his description of the struggle. 

" The President quietly listened to my reading of the telegram, and then said it 
reminded him of a notorious liar who attained such a reputation as an exaggerator 
that he finally instructed a servant to stop him, when his tongue was running too 
rapidly, by pulling his coat or touching his feet. One day the master was relating 
wonders he had seen in Europe, and described a building which was about a mile long, 
and a half-mile high. Just then the servant's heel came down on the narrator's toes, 
and he stopped abruptly. One of the listeners asked how broad this remarkable 
building might be ; the narrator modestly replied, ' about a foot ! ' " 

—From " McClellan's Own Story." 

The President manifested the greatest patience with General McClellan, even 
though the General sometimes snubbed and slighted Lincoln 
when he called. When the General-in-Chiet's conduct toward 
his chief was commented on, Lincoln replied : 

" I will hold McClellan's horse if he will only bring us 
success." 

One day the President remarked, " I should like to borrow 
the army for a day or two, if McClellan don't need it now." 

McClellan was a great and tactful civil engineer. He 
knew how to organize and equip an army, but was not successful 
in action. When a friend conmiented on McClellan's " masterly 
inactivity," Lincoln assented to the comment, by saying, 
" McClellan is a great engineer, but he has a special talent for 
a stationary engine." 




At McClellan's headquarters. 



OCTOBER 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



8 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




BILLY BROWN GOES TO VISIT THE PRESIDENT 

HAT night I footed it up to the Soldiers' Home, where Mr. Lincoln was 

livin' then, right among the sick soldiers in their tents. There was lots 

of people setlin' around in a little room, waitin' fer him. There wan't 

anybody there I knowed and I was feelin' a little funny when a door 

opened and out come little John Nicolay. Well, John didn't seem over 

glad to see me. ' Have you an appointment with Mr. Lincoln ? ' he says. 

'No sir,' I says; 'I ain't, and it ain't necessary. . . . Tell him 

Billy Brown's here and see what he says.' In about two minutes the 

door popped open and out come Mr. Lincoln, his face all lit up. He saw me first thing, 

and he laid hold of me, and just shook my hands fit to kill. ' Billy,' he says, ' novv I am 

glad to see you. Come right in. You're goin' to stay to supper with Mary an' me.' 

He had a right smart of people to see, but as soon as he got through we went out 

on the back stoop and set down and talked and talked. He asked me about pretty nigh 

everybody in Springfield. I just let loose and told him about the weddin's and births 

and the funerals, and the buildin', and I guess there wan't a yarn I'd heard in the three 

years and a half he had been away that I didn't spin fer him. Laugh - you ought to ha' 

heard him laugh— just did my heart good, fer I could see what they'd been doin' to him. 

Always a thin man, but Lordy , he was thinner'n ever now, and his face w.is kind o' drawn 

and gray — enough to make you cry. Well, we had supper and then talked scme more, 

and about ten o'clock I started down town. Wanted me to stay all night, but I said, 

' Nope Mr. Lincoln, can't; goin' back to Springfield to-morrow.' ' Billy,' he says, ' what 

did you come down here for? ' 'I come to see you, Mr. Lincoln.' ' But you ain't asked 

me for anything, Billy. What is it? Out with it. Want a post office?' 'No, 

Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see you— felt kind o' lonesome— been so long since I'd seen 

you.' Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me. ' Billy Brown,' he says, 

slow-like, ' do you mean to tell me you come all the way 

from Springfield, Illinois, just to have a visit with me? ' 

' Yes, sir,' says I, ' That's about it, and I'll be durned 

if I wouldn't go to Europe to see you, if I couldn't do it 

no other way, Mr. Lincoln.' Well, sir, I never was so 

astonished in my life. He just grabbed my hand and 

shook it nearly off, and the tears just poured down his 

face, and he says : ' Billy, you never'U know what 

good you've done me. I'm homesick, Billy, just plumb 

homesick, and it seems as if this war would never be 

over. Many a night I can see the boys a-dyin' on the 

fields and can hear their mothers cryin' for 'em at home, 

and I can't help 'em Billy. I have to send them down 

there. We've got to save the Union, Billy, we've 

got to.' " 

From He Kneiv Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell. 




OCTOBER 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FR[. 

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 




RECKLESS HUMOR OF THE SOLDIERS 

INCOLN was the great American humorist of his day. During the War, 
with all its heart-breaking pathos and tragedy, he read "Nasby," "Arte- 
mus Ward, "and "John Phoenix." He annoyed the humorless members 
of his Cabinet, and many others, by being "reminded of a story" at the 
most solemn and critical junctures. Stanton tells that he became indignant 
and was about to leave the Cabinet meeting at which the Emancipation 
Proclamation was first read, because the President insisted on reading 
page after page of "Artemus Ward " as a preface to that immortal docu- 
ment But the humor that Lincoln loved best of all was that of the soldier in the ranks. 
He himself had to enliven the pathos and tragedies of his daily life with his keen sense of 
the ludicrous, so he admired the same trait in the rank and file of the army. When he 
heard a good story of the soldiers' humor he told it to every comer 
until a new story came along to take its place. 

One of these was about a "high private " in the Army of the 
Potomac, who had both legs shot off. While being carried to the 
rear, he saw a pie-woman showing her wares, and called out to her, 
as if she were selling boots : 

' ' Say, old lady, are them pies pegged or sewed ? ' ' 
Another : A soldier at Chancellorsville was drinking his morning 
coffee from a crockery mug which he had carried through two 
campaigns. Just as the man was sipping the fragrant beverage, 
a stray ball struck the cup and carried away all but the handle, 
which was left, like a china ring, on his forefinger. Looking 
around in surprise, the soldier .soon " sensed " how he had lost his 
coffee and indignantly called out : 

" Johnny, you can't do that again ! " 

Then, anything reflecting on the dignity 

or pretensions of the high officials pleased 

the President immensely. One day a raid was 

reported to him, in which the Confederates had captured a number 

of mules and a major-general. Lincoln exclaimed : 

"How unfortunate! Those mules cost us $2co apiece!"— 
implying that major-generals were cheaper than mules because he 
could so easily replace a general. 

Another story, which the President told with keen relish, was 
about a government boat steaming up a southern river on a tour of 
inspection. 

' ' Who goes there ? ' ' came in challenge from the shore. ' ' The 
Secretary of War and Major-General Foster," was the reply. 
With infinite scorn the reckless sentry shouted back : 
"Aw ! We've got generals enough. Why don't you send us 
some hard-tack f 





General " Stonewall " 
Jackson, killed at 
Chancellorsville. 



SUN. 



SAT. 



OCTOBER 

MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 



1809 




1909 




THE QUAKER AND THE DRAFT 

HEN the draft was made, my name was one that was drawn along with 
those of several other young Friends (Quakers), two others in our little 
meeting. It created a good deal of excitement among us. The two 
others paid their three hundred dollars each, but I felt it right to do 
nothing, feeling that I could not go myself nor give money to hire others 
to go. The proper military ofificer came out and notified me that I 
would be expected to report in the military camp at Lafayette, Indiana, 
for training, on a certain day. I told him that I could not conscientiously be there, that 
as I could not fight it would not do any good for me to report. Then he demanded the 
three hundred dollars. To this I replied : 

" If I believed that war is right I would prefer to go myself than to hire some one 
else to be shot in my place." 

He told me I would either have to come or pay the three hundred dollars, or he 
would be forced to sell my property. As I was firm in my decision ... he went 
out and looked over the farm, selected the stock that he proposed to sell and then sat 
down and commenced writing bills for the public sale of our horses, cattle and hogs. 
While he was writing, dinner was ready , and when we sat down to the table we insisted 
on his eating with us. We tried to keep up a pleasant conversation on various subjects, 
making no reference to the work he was engaged in. After dinner he turned to me and said : 
" If you would get mad and order me out of the house, I could do this work much 
easier, but here you are, feeding me and my horse while I am arranging to take your 
property from you. I tell you it's hard work." 

We told him we had no unkind feelings toward him as we supposed he was only 
obeying the orders of those who were superior to him. I went 
out again to my work and, when he had prepared the sale bills, 
he placed one on a large tree by the roadside in front of the 
house, and then rode around and placed the others in different 
places in the neighborhood. 

A few days before the time had arrived for the sale I was 
at Lafayette. The officer came to me and said : 

" The sale is postponed. I don't know when it will be. 
You can go on using your horses." 

I heard nothing more about it for several years. After 
the War closed I learned that Governor Morton, who was in 
Washington about that time, spoke to President Lincoln 
about it, and he ordered the sale to be stopped. 

(From the Autobiography of Allen Jay, by permission of The John C. Winston Co. 
publishers, also, of Wayne Whipple's "Story-Life of Lincoln.") 




OCTOBER 

TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 



SUN. 



MON. 



1809 




1909 




A NEW STORY OF LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 

YDIA," said good old Jacob of Ephrata, " let's go over to Gettysburg and 
hear Mr. Everett at the dedication of the battle-ground for a cemetery, day 
after to-morrow. We'll go to-morrow so as to be there bright and early the 
next day, in time to get a good place to see and hear all that's going on." 

It was a long drive from Ephrata to Gettysburg, but to hear Edward 
Everett's oration would be the privilege of a lifetime. Early in the morning 
of the 19th of November, 1S63, Jacob and Lydia took their places near the 
front of the special platform erected on the great battle-field. 

There was a long, wearying delay. The sun shone unusually warm 
for November. At last the little procession arrived. President Lincoln was there with 
an escort from Washington, for he had been invited, as a matter of form, to make a few 
perfunctory remarks at the close of the exercises. Edward Everett, for whose convenience the 
date had been postponed about a month, did not arrive on the field until after the hour set for 
him to begin his address. There were diplomats and other dignitaries. Jacob pointed out 
Secretary Seward, who, he thought, should have been made President instead of Mr. Lincoln. 

Lydia almost pitied the poor President as he sat there, awkward and uncomfortable, in the 
rocking-chair reserved for him. The band played and played. No one seemed to consider the 
tired people who had stood there for hours waiting under the direct rays of the midday sun. 

Lydia felt as if she could not stand there much longer, though the crowd was so dense she 
could not fall. Everything began to turn black, and she grew dizzy and weak ; she felt herself 
going — sinking ! There was confusion, crowding, and a man called out : 
"A woman has fainted ! ' ' 

In all their official foresight no provision had been made for a fainting woman. The crowd 
pressed tighter. She heard a voice out of the vague spaces above the chaos around her, 
commanding : 

"Here, hand that woman to me." 

Lydia felt strong yet gentle hands lifting her, it seemed, out of all her troubles — then she 
lost herself. 



When she came to herself again she was sitting on that high platform in Mr. Lincoln's 
easy chair with thousands of eyes upon her, and who should be sitting by, fanning her 
tenderly, but the President of the United States ! All this was more than modest Lydia could 
bear. She gasped, hoarsely : 

' ' I — feel — better now. I want — to go — back. ' ' 

" O, no, madam," said Mr. Lincoln cheerily, " you stay right where you are. It was hard 
enough to pull you out of there, and we couldn't stick you back into that crowd again." 

So this is why, in some old pictures of Abraham Lincoln delivering his immortal address 
at Gettysburg, a little, shrinking old lady in plain garb — not 
Lucretia Mott, but humble Lydia of Ephrata — is shown sitting 
near him. During that long two hours, while Everett was 
delivering his brilliant and scholarly oration, poor Lydia could 
not forget her embarrassing position. But she forgot herself and 
everything save the speaker and his wonderful words when her 
gallant attendant began his brief address. 

On their way home next day, Jacob, after a long silence, 
remarked : 

"Mr. Everett's oration was grand, wasn't it? I was sorry 
when he stopped. I'm glad we went to hear it — but, do you know, 
Lydia, I've been thinking it all over, and, I've just about made 
up my mind that little speech of ' Father Abraham's ' was the 
best of all ; yes, I think it was the best we ever heard." 
(Written from the account given by Lydia herself to Dr. Joseph S. 

Waltou, George School, Pennsylvania.) 




NOVEMBER 



OCT. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



31 1 



1809 




1909 



HOW LINCOLN MET THE OPPOSITION TO GRANT 




ONG years of searching for a capable commanding general elapsed before the 
President discovered "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, the man " after his 
own heart. ' ' But Grant had no ' ' friend at court. ' ' He was too busy to seek 
advancement— had barely time to write the necessary despatches. But 
jealousy intrigued aganist him at Washington. Self-appointed committees 
called on the President, who replied : 

" I can't spare this man, he fights !" 

A company of ministers came and protested against Grant, complaining 
that he was addicted to the use of whiskey. 
"Can you tell me what kind he drinks ?" asked the President. The clergymen retired and 
consulted. Returning, they said : "No, Mr President, we cannot tell." 

"Now, that's too bad," said Lincoln, "for if I knew, I'd like to send a barrel of the same 
brand to some of my other generals." 

This nagging was kept up even after Grant's victory at Vicksburg and the paroling ol 
Pemberton's army. Another delegation came and warned the President that the Confederates 
would break their paroles, get back into other ranks and have to be conquered again. Lincoln 
then told them this story : 

"'Have you ever heard about Sykes's yellow dog?' said I to the spokesman of the 
delegation. He said he hadn't. 

"Well, I must tell you about him, said L Sykes had a yellow dog he set great store by, 
but there were a lot of small boys around the village, and that's always a bad thing for dogs, 
you know. These boys didn't share Sykes's views, and they were not disposed to let the dog 
have a fair show. Even Sykes had to admit that the dog was getting unpopular; in fact, it was 
soon seen that a prejudice was growing up against that dog that threatened to wreck all his 
future prospects in life The boys, after meditating how they could get the best of him, finally 
fixed up a cartridge with a long fuse, put the cartridge in a piece of meat, dropped the meat in 
the road in front of Sykes's door, and then perched themselves on a fence 
a good distance ofi", with the end of the fuse in their hands. 

"Then they whistled for the dog. When he came out he scented 
the bait, and bolted the meat, cartridge and all The boys touched 
ofi" the fuse with a cigar and in about a second a report came from 
that dog that sounded like a clap of thunder. Sykes came bounding 
out of the house and yelled : 

"'What's up! Anything busted?' 

"There was no reply except a snicker from the small boys roosting 
on the fence, but as Sykes looked up he saw the whole air filled with 
pieces of yellow dog. He picked up the biggest piece he could find, a 
portion of the back with a part of the tail still hanging to it, and after 
turning it around and looking it all over he said : 

" ' Well, I guess he'll never be much account again— fli a dog .'' 
"And I guess Pemberton's forces will never be much account 




again — as an army ! 



General Grant. 



NOVEMBER 

TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. 

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 



SUN. 



MON. 



SAT. 



i 



1809 




1909 



STORIES OF STANTON AND LINCOLN 

ROM the day in 1855, when Mr. Stanton treated plain Mr. Lincoln of 
Illinois so contemptuously in the McCormick Reaper case, the change 
that was wrought by Lincoln's master mind over Stanton's aggressive, 
cynical spirit was almost miraculous. After Stanton became Secretary 
of War his manner toward his chief was still critical and insubordinate. 
Story after story is told of the caustic comments he made upon the 
President's orders. No doubt Mr. Lincoln was too lenient with 
offenders of all kinds, and his tenderness was regarded in the War 

Department as " sentimental gush," destructive of discipline in the Army, but sometimes 

Stanton's remarks were hardly less than downright insults. 

Lincoln's sense of humor and his long suffering patience permitted him to see the 

good that was in the great War Secretary. While Dennis Hanks was in the White House 





was as big as vou are, I would take him over my knee and spank him." The President 
replied, gently: "No, Stanton is an able and valuable man to this nation, and I am 
glad to bear with his anger for the service he can render the people." 

Sometimes the President waived his instructions, letting Stanton have his way. 
On such occasions he would only shrug his shoulders and remark, quizzically : 

"Well, you know, I never did have much influence with this Administration, any way." 

One day Lincoln sent a committee to the Secretary of War with an order which 
enraged Stanton beyond all reason. He flatly refused to comply with the President's 
instructions and said : 

"If Lincoln gave you such an order as that he's a blamed old fool ! " 

In breathless consternation the committee hurried back to the White House and 
reported the whole conversation to the President. 

"/)/(/ Stanton say I'm a blamed fool?" asked Lincoln. 

" He did, Mr. President, he did, repeatedly, and with profane oaths, too." 

"Well," said Lincoln, "What Stanton says is nearly always right. If he says 
I'm a blamed fool, I must be one. I gue.ss I'll step over and 
see Stanton right now." 

As time went on the Secretary's strictures and violence 
diminished. One day the President gave an order which the 
Secretary said could not be executed. But Lincoln said it 
must be done. 

"But, Mr. President, it is impossible— it is unreasonable; 
I cannot do it." 

" Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done." The wills of the 
two men had come into direct conflict. Lincoln's deep blue-gray 
eye looked into Stanton's — and the impossible was accomplished. 
Stanton had at last met his master. 

When the murdered President's great heart ceased to beat, 
in the little bedroom opposite Ford's Theatre, on the morning of 
April 15, 1865, it was the loyal and loving Stanton who closed 
his eyelids and tenderly whispered in the depths of his great 
grief for his fallen chief : " He is the Man for the ages! " 

NOVEMBER 




Edwin M. Stanton. 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUBS. 



WED. 



THUR. 



FRl. 



SAT. 



14 15 16 17 18 19 20 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN AND TAD 

T first the Lincolns' youngest son was called Thomas, for his grand- 
father, but his father nicknamed him "Tadpole," then "Taddie," 
which was shortened to "Tad." Always the pet of the family, he 
was indulged by his father, to a degree almost pathetic after the death 
of Willie. The President seldom seemed happy except when he was 
romping about the White House with Tad. The boy was with him in 
Cabinet meetings, and in the midst of the gravest conferences with 
senators and diplomats. High-strung and acutely sensitive, he would 
sometimes fly into a tantrum, but a gentle word from his fond father would quiet him. 

Many are the .stories told of this " child of the nation," from babyhood until after his 
father's tragic death. Once, when Lawyer Lincoln and Judge Treat were playing chess 
in the Springfield office, Tad came to call his father to supper. The game had to be 
finished. The boy caught his father off his guard, got under the chessboard and it 
suddenly "bucked," sending the chessmen flying in all directions. The judge was 
indignant and said the boy ought to be punished. But Lincoln, putting on his hat and 
motioning the judge to accompany them to supper, said : 

" From the position of your pieces. Judge, I don't think you have anything to 
complain of." So Tad escaped a spanking that time. 

But his father did spank him once, on their way to Washington, for raising the car 
window a little, and shutting it suddenly, trying to pinch the fingers of the children 
who were looking in at the family while the President-elect was making a speech. 

Once, on their way down the river to Fortress Monroe, Tad was rather lawless, inter- 
rupting the conversation on weighty matters, until his father promised him a dollar if he 
would keep still But that was an impossibility. Though the difference in his conduct 
was hardly perceptible. Tad stoutly demanded his dollar. Indulgence and a sense of 
justice struggled for the mastery in Lincoln's mind for only a moment. 
President sighed, slowly took out a dollar and gave it to the boy, saying : 

" Well, I'll keep mv part of the bargain." 

In "The Story-Life of Lincoln " is published, for the first time, 
the facsimile and the story of an order, written by the President to a 
chief-engineer to " pump the water out of a certain well which Tad 
will show." The boy had apparently lo.st a toy down that well and 
must have it again at any cost. 

When Lincoln entered the fallen Confederate Capital, he walked 
through its streets, leading Tad. While delivering his last speech, in 
respon.se to a serenade, Tad was near, catching the leaves of his 
father's address as Lincoln dropped them. As the President did not 
finish the pages fast enough to please Tad, the boy tugged at his 
coat-tails and shouted : " Give me another paper, papa !" 

Thomas Pendel, the faithful old doorkeeper of the White House, 
tells a most pathetic story of Tad's coming into the White House the 
night of the assa.ssination, crying : 

"Tom Pen ! Tom Pen ! They've killed papa dead — they've killed 
papa dead !" 



Then the 




"Lieutenant" Tad. 



NOVEMBER 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 



1809 




1909 




LINCOLN'S LAST DAY IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING 

HE 14th of April, 1865, was a beautiful day. A delegation had been sent to 

Charleston, South Carolina, to raise the flag over Fort Sumter, which had 

been surrendered just four years before, on April 14th, 1S61. Richmond 

had fallen into Union hands. Lee had surrendered and Grant was now in 

Washington, on his way northward. Robert Lincoln, one of Grant's aides, 

was at home once more. It was a happy hour that the Lincoln family 

spent at breakfast that morning. The Civil War was over at last. The 

newspapers were full of orders and announcements, suspending the draft 

and stopping all military operations. 

The War was over and the people were jubilant There were many demonstrations 

of joy in spite of the knowledge that the day was Good Friday. The President had 

consented to go to Ford's theater that night where a benefit was to be given to Miss Laura 

Keene in ' Our American Cousin." " The hero of Appomattox and his lady " were announced 

and two boxes were thrown together for the double party. But 
the Grants decided to go on that day to meet their children in a 
northern school. The Lincolns, greatly disappointed, invited 
Miss Harris, a Senator's daughter, and her Jia)iC(\ Major Rath- 
bone, to take the places of General and Mrs. Grant. The 
President felt obliged to go as announced, as he did not wish 
to disappoint the people wholly. 

The last meeting of Lincoln's Cabinet was memorable. 
Grant was present, and made his report in person. The Presi- 
dent was more cheerful than his official family had ever seen 
him. He told them about a dream he had the night before— a 
dream which he said he had had just before each of several 
important events. He thought it must refer, this time, to 
Sherman, who had yet to capture Johnston, as there was no 
other great happening likely. 

Lincoln took his wifedriving, that afternoon, alone. She af- 
terward said she had never seen him so happy —planning for their 
future peace and comfort in a quiet home His mission for his beloved country was accomplished. 
The play had advanced to the second act when the Presidential party arrived at the theater 
that night. The President had been detained to perform several acts of mercy which are now 
historical as the last things he did in the land of the living. 
The play stopped and everybody gave a grand demonstration in 
his honor. He seemed happy in the joy of the people. 

In the midst of the third act a pistol shot rang out, a tragic 
voice shouted "Sic semper tyrannis," and a handsome young actor, 
recognized as John Wilkes Booth, was seen leaping from the box to 
the stage. One of his spurs caught in the flag drapery, and he fell, 
but he got up quickly, brandished the stiletto with which he had cut 
the wrist of Major Rathbone, who tried to stop him, and he disappeared 
before the dazed spectators realized that it was not a part of the play. 
Piercing shrieks from the President's box conveyed the awful intelli- 
gence to the minds of all. Pandemonium reigned in that auditorium. 
The unconscious form of President Lincoln was borne to a house 
across the street, where he died early the next morning. Stanton, 
no longer sneering and profane — Stanton, loyal and heart-broken, 
lovingly closed the dying eyes, and whispered tenderly, all uncon- 
scious of the others, 

"He is the man for the ages!" Gen. Robert E.Lee. 




Entering Richmond leading Tad. 




SUN. 



MON. 



NOVEMBER 

TUBS. WED. THURS. 



28 29 30 



FRI. 



SAT. 



1809 




1909 



O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

WALT WHITMAN'S FAMOUS POEM. 

O Captain ! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring ; 

But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 

The bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies. 

Fallen cold and dead. 



O Captain ! My Captain ! Rise up and hear the bells ; 

Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills. 

For you bouquets and ribbon 'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding, 

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ; 

Here Captain ! dear father ! 

This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck 

You've fallen culd and dead. 



My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won ; 

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! 

But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead. 




DECEMBER 



SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



1 



^ 



1809 




1909 




THE GRANDEST GRIEF OF HISTORY 

R. HORACE GREELEY was saved by a loyal assistant from attacking 
the President in the Tribune while Lincoln lay dying in Washington. 
The news of the assassination was received with sorrow by many of 
the most enlightened Confederates. Jefferson Davis spoke of it as a 
calamity to the South. 

Wednesday, April 19th, was the day set for the funeral. It was 
Patriots' Day in New England (the anniversary of the battles of 
Lexington and Concord) and the fourth anniversary of the first 
bloodshed of the Civil War, at Baltimore. 

"It was the grandest funeral 
That ever passed on earth," 

for, while the simple services were being held in the White House and Lincoln's body 
lay' in state under the majestic dome of the Capitol at Washington, it is estimated that 
more than twenty-five millions of people in the United States and 
Canada, and all over the civilized world, gathered in their places and 

"Wept with the passion of an angry grief" 

over the noblest martyrdom of all humanity. 

On Friday, April 21st. the funeral train started from the Capital 
on that long, sad journey of two thousand miles, to Springfield, Illinois, 
reversing the route which Lincoln, as President-elect, had traversed on 
his triumphal way to Washington. In the cities where he had stopped 
to speak, his body was laid in state, and many thousands passed by 
" in silence and in tears" Across the open country the people stood 
Greeley. bareheaded, even in the rain, while the solemn cortvge swept by. 

Watch-fires blazed at night along the route, and everything was 
done to express the bitter sorrow of his people, loving and beloved. 
William Cullen Bryant, who had been one of the first newspaper 
men to champion the cause of the "Rail-splitter" candidate amid the 
sneers and snobbery of the unfriendly press, with a strong editorial 
on Lincoln, "A Real Representative Man," now wrote the following 
funeral ode for the services in New York City : 




O, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
Gentle and merciful and just ! 

Who in the fear of God didst bear 
The sword of power, a nation's 
trust 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
Amid the awe that husheth all, 

And speak the anguish of a land 
That shook with horror at thy 
fall. 



Thy task is done, the bonds are free; 

We bear thee to an honored grave. 
Whose proudest monument shall be 

The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 
Has placed thee with the Sons of 
Light 
Among the noble hearts of those 
Who perished in the cause of 
Right. 




Jefferson Davis. 



DECEMBER 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 



^ 




1809 HSdiU 1909 



LINCOLN'S LETTER TO A BEREAVED MOTHER 

The following letter is hanging on the wall of Brasenose College, Oxford University, England, as 
a model of pure and exquisite English. This is a facsimile, exactly as written by President Lincoln : 

Cj; Oh^ ^tijy, &i*^. <97ui^^ 

J^A^*^i-nt^ of lhjlX4A.ouC,'fCu.4Ji^Li4t /t^K/o^ Mc\M tl/)*> it>i\iL> ^k-o^^^X-i, gC 

'f^*'^ j^<n^ W-7^ -^e-MJ cUjud ^.^<M,c«rt^-d «w Pii^ ■^%i^^ <^-^Ct<i. 

/yySf,^^^ ur^^i-e^ j^^i-^ZcU. euttU^JC^ ;L ■£€4i,uJjtt^ mo^ f'-"^^ *^ 

r^ ^G— i— 7 ^ y r^ 

^ j,,^ ^-^.r^M^J-t^ry^J.^, *-^ A«6^ p;^— --^ -^ <;t£..^**^<^ 

(The above letter in type.) 
To Mrs. Bixhy, Boston, Mass. Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864. 

Dear Madam : I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General 
of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how 
weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so over- 
whelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic 
they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you 
only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a 
sacrifice upon the altar of freedom- Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln. 

After receiving this letter, three of Mrs. Bixby's sons, reported killed in battle, came home to her 
alive and well ! Several families of the same name had been confused in the records and all Mrs. 
Bixby's five sons were reported dead. To be raised from the depths of such a grief to this great joy was 
almost too much for that poor mother's heart. 

DECEMBER 

SUN. MON. TUBS. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT, 

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 



^ 



1809 




1 



1909 




THE PRESIDENT ACKNOWLEDGES GEN. SHERMAN'S 

CHRISTMAS GIFT 

OCIAL functions of all sorts were a great bore to President Lincoln. 
One night, Noah Brooks, a friend, passed along in the line and 
shook hands with him, but noticed that the President did not seem 
to see him. Meeting Mr. Lincoln after the public reception was 
over, Mr. Brooks told him that he had already greeted him that 
evening, but that the President's mind seemed to be far away. 
" Yes," replied Mr. Lincoln, " I was thinking of a man down South." 
The "man down South" was General Sherman, who had disappeared from the 
country, telegraphic communication having been cut off for weeks, on his now well- 
known "march from Atlanta to the sea." Noah Brooks, who was a newspaper 
correspondent, called upon the President one day, and found him writing a message 
to Congress. 

"I expect you want to know all about Sherman's raid?" said Mr. Lincoln, in a 
confidential tone. Brooks, of course, replied eagerly in the affirmative. 

"Well, then, I'll read you this paragraph from my message." But the extract 
gave no clew to General Sherman's whereabouts. The President laughed heartily at 
the correspondent's disappointment, but said, kindly : 

" Well, my dear fellow, that's all that Congress will know about it, anyhow." 
Soon after this, Sherman " came out " and announced the capture of Savannah 
as a Christmas gift to the nation. 

Lincoln wrote the General as follows : 

' ' Executive Mansion, > 
" Washington, December 26th, 1864. j 

"My dear General Sherman : 

" Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift — the 
capture of Savannah. 

"When you were about leaving Atlanta for the 
Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful ; but feeling 
that 3'ou were the better judge, and remembering that 
'nothing risked, nothing gained,' I did not interfere. 
Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all 
yours ; for I believe none of us went further than to 
acquiesce. . . . Please make my grateful acknowl- 
edgments to your whole army — officers and men. 
" Yours very truly, 

"A. Lincoln." 




General W. T. Sherman. 



DECEMBER 



SUN. 



MON. 



TUES. 



WED. 



THURS. 



FRI. 



SAT. 



19 20 21 22 23 24 25 



c 



1809 f " j/iilJ 1909 




"THE FIRST AMERICAN" 

FROM LOWELL'S COMMEMORATION ODE. 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head, 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn. 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 

. . . I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait. 
Safe in himself as in a gate. 

So always firmly he : 

He knew to bide his time. 

And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour. 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 

From Complete Poetical Works by James Russell Lowell, by permission 
of Houghton, MiflBin & Co. 




DECEMBER 

SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT. 

26 27 28 29 30 31 = = 



^ 



DEC 7 I9C2 



LhMy'lS 



-4 



